


Influence

by Frotu



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: (slaps roof of fic), F/M, anyway I'm always a hoe for happy endings so there's that, lots of these two being idiots about each other over the years, so kind of a slow background sort of burn I guess?, this bad boy can fit so many tropes in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-01-25 00:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frotu/pseuds/Frotu
Summary: You didn't spend a decent amount of time with somebody without it leaving a mark, even if they were your kidnapper. And sometimes that mark ends up being deeper and more meaningful than anticipated.A series of times when Megamind and Roxanne impacted each other over the years.
Relationships: Megamind/Roxanne Ritchi
Comments: 87
Kudos: 417





	1. Major Changes

The heaviness of sleep was absurdly difficult to push herself out of this time. Roxanne had been managing on two or three hours a night for the past week while cramming for finals, but she seemed to bounce back in the morning with a somewhat acceptable amount of energy. Or, at least, she had thought so. 

Had she fallen asleep studying? How long had she been out? How much time had she wasted? Roxanne fought to open her eyes, blinking hard to clear her vision, but the darkness refused to give way. 

While her sight struggled to return, her other senses began noticing the details – the awkward angle of her arms, the roughness of rope against her skin, the cool damp of the air – that tied a knot of irritation in the pit of her stomach.

“He had to pick finals week,” she muttered into the stale air of the bag draped over her head. “Of all weeks. _ This _ week.”

“Yes, _ this _ week!”

Roxanne wanted to groan, or sigh, or maybe yell some profanities. She did _ not _ have time for this, not now. That morning the library finally found the misplaced microfilm covering the case she needed to supplement her essay, and she was already going to be hard pressed to finish that while also studying for her Telecommunications Management and Psychology of Crime finals the next day. These kidnappings were most commonly an irritating hassle and occasionally an undignified embarrassment, but this was the first time they were threatening something truly important. 

Even before the bag was tugged off, Roxanne felt her features settle into a severe scowl. She was not going to stand for this today. 

For a satisfying second when the bag was removed and he glanced her way, she watched the proud smile pulled across Megamind’s face falter before righting itself. “So, it seems that we find ourselves in a familiar situation, Ms. Ritchi.”

She finally decided on sighing. “That being the case, how about you let me go home rather than wasting my whole afternoon? I mean, the end result is going to be the same so I don’t really understand why I need to be here…”

“Oh, there’s no need to act coy and downplay your importance,” he chided, linking his hands behind his back as he looked down at her. “We both know this is the most effective way to gain Metro Man’s attention.”

He was unfortunately correct about that last part – Metro Man seemed to have a particular weakness for saving hostages. They could be anybody: a random middle-aged woman who had been out for a walk, the corrupt manager of some bank downtown, even a group of prisoners on work release (although that instance had involved confusion for everybody involved). Over the years Megamind had taken a variety of hostages, but for whatever baffling reason she was starting to make quite a spot for herself on the short list of repeat offenders, as it were. 

Looking back, Roxanne really regretted asking for that interview with Metro Man four years ago when she had been a senior in high school. It had seemed like a good idea – even a great idea, if she was honest with herself – at the time. Wayne had graduated the spring before she entered the same high school, but he was so unavoidably entrenched in the faculty and administration’s memory that it was almost like she had attended with him. 

So, since the people at school so adored him, what better legacy could she leave herself than to obtain one of his elusive interviews? He had been attending a university on the other side of the city, and through the connections she had made while working on the school’s newspaper, she managed to get word to him that she would like to do a special feature about him in her last column before graduation. He had rather graciously accepted, and she met him at a park close to campus. 

They talked about the high school, and his time in college, and the increasing frequency and scale of his battles with Megamind. For her part, Roxanne had been a little surprised at how easy he was to talk to; he was quite willing to give elaborate responses to even the simplest questions, and she had to do very little prompting to get the answers she was looking for. As arrogant as his comments could sound, there was something about his personality that made it evident that it was not his intention to come across that way. There was enough sincerity underlying the righteousness that she had found herself smiling encouragingly through most of the interview.

And that should have been that. He had been better to talk to than some of the people she interviewed, but she had not been particularly inclined to talk to him again. As far as Roxanne could remember, she had been nothing but professional through the entirety of the time they had spoken, but apparently something about the exchange had caught some most unwanted attention. 

So, not two weeks later, she had found herself hanging from a support beam in an abandoned warehouse. It had been damp and cold and dark, and she had been able to hear the muted taps of leaking water echoing in the cavernous space. It had not been long after she had awoken, disorientation slowly giving way to a wave of confused terror, that she had heard the first ripple of laughter.

That was when she had met the individual who was quickly ousting all others for the spot as Metro City’s supervillain. She had been genuinely afraid that time, afraid of him and his threats and the gaping hole in her memory of how she had ended up there. The whole ordeal had been so frantic and unexpected, and before she had been quite able to grasp what was going on, it had been over. 

Wayne had apologized profusely as he took her to the waiting police, telling her that he should have anticipated something like this if he met with her. His voice had been half lost in the din of officers trying to get her statement, and paramedics checking her vitals, and reporters hoping to get a story, and it was not until her parents had pushed through the crowd that everything really started to fall into place.

That night, Roxanne had slept on the sofa in the living room with her parents perched together on the love seat. The cold from the warehouse had taken most of the evening to leech from her bones, and she had awoken periodically through the night with a pounding heart to the little creaking sounds of the house. By the time the sun was up and the shadows from the night before dispersed, she had come to the conclusion that she would not go through that again.

After her father had gone in late to work, she sat at the table with her mom and went through the business cards and numbers that had been given to her in the chaos following her rescue. Most had been for psychiatrists or psychologists, although one card had been for some sort of group that apparently met on Tuesday afternoons and served cookies. Roxanne quickly rejected all the options and instead grabbed the phonebook to look up self defense classes. 

Of course, in the end, it had done little good. By how things went currently, the breaks between kidnapping had been rather long there at the beginning, which had at least given her time to brace herself. Each time it seemed to get easier, although it seemed twisted for a crime of that nature to be something a person could become accustomed to. It was just that it quickly became obvious that Megamind’s intention was to _ threaten _ her; actually going through with those threats seemed almost like an option that was not even on the table. 

Still, the fact that he did not truly seem to wish her harm had not kept her from swiftly raising a knee the eighth time he kidnapped her, as he stood too close when the apparatus she was tied to did not restrict her legs. It had been very satisfying to find that self defense training to be used against human men apparently worked on alien ones as well.

So, by now, this sort of thing was hardly surprising anymore, let alone alarming. Roxanne would admit that some of the contraptions Megamind came up with did make her nervous, and a couple times over the past few years she had been admittedly frightened. That had less to do with him, however, and more to do with her concern that, given his track record of failure, an accident might occur that would have some sort of unfortunate outcome. 

Besides, given that rescue was always ridiculously dependable, there had not seemed to be much reason to worry. Wayne had, unnecessarily, decided to shoulder the responsibility for her being involved and never failed to show up. Roxanne was starting to think that might just be perpetuating the situation, but she had not worked up the nerve to say as much when she so often caught something akin to regret chasing the omnipresent expression of heroism from his face. 

She could not just grin and bear this ridiculous pattern, but at least at this point she felt that she could deal with it. The whole thing was so _ routine _; if she could just sit things out for a while, Megamind would be back in jail and she would be back home. 

Of course, the problem at present was that Roxanne did not have the time to sit things out. 

She was convinced that at some point soon she would need to start wearing a bite guard to sleep; she felt the tension in her jaw as she ground her teeth together to avoid outright exploding with her frustration. Over the years, Megamind had made it pretty clear that, if he couldn’t get a good scream or fainting spell out of her, he was rather receptive to any sort of reaction at all. The last thing she wanted to do was give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her.

So Roxanne counted to twenty, just for good measure, and took a deep breath. Relaxing into her bonds, she lifted her head and tried to school her expression into one of casual irritation – she wasn’t even going to try for nonchalance. Megamind had turned to the monitors and was messing with some of the dials on the control panel, so she had a moment to gather herself.

Naturally, the moment was not very long. “I must say, I’m surprised by the lack of witty retorts tonight, Ms. Ritchi,” he said as he turned around, the brow raised in question completely contradicted by his grin. 

“Surprised, huh?” she replied dryly. 

“Well, I suppose your silence is understandable,” he conceded, waving a hand airily. “It was merely a matter of time before you were overwhelmed with despair at the inescapable nature of my genius.”

“Hmm…” She pursed her lips and turned her gaze to the ceiling. “I guess that’s one way to explain it. Certainly not the most logical, but that’s not always one of your strong points, is it?”

She didn’t need to be looking at him to imagine the way his shoulders would stiffen at that. “Oh, how _ quaint _ that you actually believe yourself capable of understanding the complexities of my logic! I guess you can just hope Metro Man is as clever and will figure out the clues in time to save you.”

Roxanne smiled to herself as he marched over to the table on the far side of the room and began fiddling with something. The pace this evening was actually respectable, all things considered, so perhaps it could be wrapped up in a timely manner. 

When he turned back toward her, she could not help but raise a brow at what he held in his hand. “A necklace?” she asked, not even bothering to cover the incredulity in her voice.

He swung it around his finger, shaking his head. “Oh, it will go around your neck, but that’s where the similarities end.” Finally close enough to her, he looped the necklace around the back of her head and then latched it in the front. “With every minute that Metro Man fails to rescue you, the length of the chain will gradually shorten. And when it becomes too short, it will–”

“You didn’t get the idea from those necklaces called chokers, did you?”

“What? No! I had absolutely no idea that there was a necklace called that! What a fascinating coincidence,” he replied, his gaze wandering. “How preposterous, to suggest that I’d have such familiarity with women’s jewelry…”

Roxanne ignored him and glanced down at the metal draped over her chest. “I have to say, this kind of lacks your usual… flair.”

That seemed to get him back on track. “That is because you rudely interrupted me and therefore did not hear the entirety of my diabolical plan! When the necklace reaches its final length, it will not only trigger an internal explosion, but also detonate a series of bombs planted around City Hall, where, as you probably do not know, they are hosting a convention of foreign corporations. Metro Man will be forced to choose between saving you or saving those at City Hall, unless he finally leaves Metrocity.”

“Ah, I see.” This all seemed a lot more straightforward than she had anticipated, and by now it was becoming increasingly difficult to beat back the flicker of hope that this might be done quickly. After all, she was pretty sure there had been a remarkably similar situation at some point recently, and it seemed that these ‘two target’ schemes did not pose much of a problem. “And how long before the detonation?”

The answer was given with a sneer. “Well, knowing that Metro Man’s intellect is nowhere near as impressive as my own, I graciously granted him two hours to put all the pieces together before initiating the countdown.”

He continued speaking, but Roxanne had tuned him out. Megamind notoriously over-estimated these things, but even considering the fact that Metro Man usually was there in less than half the time Megamind allotted, that still meant she could be there for an hour more. Even now she did not know how much of her time had been wasted.

All the fight went out of her. Why was she the one who had to consistently deal with this stuff? Not that she would really wish it upon anybody else, but weren’t there other individuals who Wayne had associated with who might have worked, at least this once? Slumping in the chair, Roxanne wished her arms were free so that she could rub her eyes.

“Can you just let me go?”

Whatever soliloquy Megamind was indulging himself in instantly stopped; perhaps she had not kept the disappointment and stress out of her voice as well as she would have liked. His arms, in the middle of some flamboyant gesture, slowly returned to his sides. “Is this some sort of new ploy?” he eventually asked, apparently thrown off by her change of mood. His expression shifted into suspicion as he looked her over, and it seemed like he would have continued if Minion had not entered the room.

“I found the schedule, sir!” he said as he waved her planner in the air. 

Roxanne glanced at him and felt her irritation spike again. “What are you doing with that? Were— were you going through my bag?!”

Minion had the decency to look bashful as Megamind took the planner from him. “Well,” he began in an apologetic tone, “it just seemed like it would be beneficial to plan the kidnappings for times that would be convenient for everybody–”

“They are _ never _ convenient!” she fumed. 

“What kind of code is this?” She glanced at Megamind, who was frowning at the planner. “_ Psy-cri final _?”

“My Psychology of Crime final. It’s tomorrow,” she sighed, continuing to frown as he rummaged through the pages. 

“That doesn’t sound like a class you’d need for broadcasting.” He squinted at her before returning to the planner.

“That’s because it’s for my criminology major.” 

“I thought you were studying broadcast journalism,” Minion put in, fins fluttering in confusion. “I mean, I remember having to get you a few times from your internship at that station…”

Roxanne looked back and forth between the two of them. She tried to decide her thoughts on the fact that the individuals who kidnapped her and put her in what appeared to be dangerous situations could also hold a conversation with her over her course of study. 

“I’m doing a double major,” she said eventually, turning her head to address Minion. Somehow, continuing the conversation didn’t seem quite as wrong if it was directed toward him. Circumstances aside, he had only ever been polite and careful with her, and in response she found it difficult to quell the impulse to be at least somewhat cordial in return.

There was a snort to the side. “Well, isn’t somebody the overachiever.”

Roxanne glared. “No, somebody is just being practical.” 

“But, isn’t that an awful lot of work, Miss Ritchi?” Minion asked. “And you’ve seemed so passionate about journalism! Those articles you’ve written for your university have been really well done.”

She allowed him a small smile at the compliment. “There just aren’t a lot of positions for what I’d like to do. I want to give myself some options in case that doesn’t work out.”

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” Megamind sighed dramatically, leaning back against one of the consoles and folding his arms. “I’ve spent all these years listening to you–”

“You could have stopped at any time.”

“—harp about all sorts of virtues and morals,” he continued, raising his voice above hers, “and then you turn out to be one of those people who _ settle _.” 

Roxanne’s mouth snapped shut. The comment resounded in her head, ringing with a truth that she was reluctant to acknowledge. It was hard to avoid, though, when the realization had hummed at the edge of her own thoughts for years now. Perhaps because of that she found, with no small amount of surprise, that it stung. 

Both her parents had been taken aback when she decided to double major after talking about journalism, and especially broadcast journalism, for so long. One of the things she had become good at, however, was research, and all the research was quick to point out the odds of accomplishing the goals she had. Double majoring had therefore been a really logical decision.

And her criminology classes weren’t that bad; she’d become a bit of a case study in a handful of them over the years, and she figured that it didn’t hurt for her to have more information about a system she had become unwillingly involved in. They really had been informative courses, and she had even enjoyed a number of them.

Of course, because of the subject matter, everything had been rather structured, with very little room for deviation. There were so many rules, _ laws _; in an environment like that, ‘creative thinking’ and ‘spontaneity’ and ‘hunches’ almost seemed to be considered dirty words. It was easy to excel in those courses when everything was so cut and dry, even when there were times where the dryness could have bored her to tears. 

_ One of those people who _ settle. Nobody had put it that way before. So far everybody had been supportive of her choice and had acknowledged that it was good to diversify her options. True, the comments had all been pretty sterile, but then again they were responses to a pragmatic choice. What other responses could she have expected? Most people followed the societal norms of keeping their emotional reactions to themselves.

Which did not make it terribly surprising that Megamind would be the one to kick down the tenuous wall of logic she had built around her decision.

Roxanne did not realize how long she had been silent until he moved forward. “Did I manage to hit one of those exceedingly elusive nerves of yours?” he wondered, his tone of indifference so carefully constructed that it immediately betrayed what might have been excitement or hope. Perhaps both.

“I was actually thinking that I should get dropped off at the store after this. I need to pick up more fruit cups and Poptarts.” The last thing she was going to confess to was that something he said had managed to get under her skin.

And it certainly had. Even now, the words echoed faintly in the background of her thoughts. Did it really make her come across as the sort of person who would give up what she loved just for convenience, for ease? 

Was that honestly what she was doing?

Roxanne half-noticed Megamind turn back to the computers and press a series of keys; it was only when the necklace-bomb shortened by one link that she finally pushed her thoughts fully to the present. The comment balanced on her tongue died when he tossed the planner back to Minion and made his way toward a door on the far side of the room.

“Where are you going, sir?” Minion asked, the confusion evident in his voice. He glanced at the displays around the room and frowned. “Did you just initiate the–”

“There’s no need to actually say it, Minion!” he quickly cut in, throwing him a warning glance. “Although yes, I did.”

“But, it’s over an hour and a half early!” He looked at Roxanne, his expression concerned. “You haven’t given Metro Man the allotted amount of time.”

Megamind gestured dismissively. “I sent off the last-resort clue at the same time. Nothing about how to execute the plan has changed; I’m merely moving up the timeline so we can get to my glorious battle faster.” The smirk he turned upon Roxanne had a measure of its usual smugness replaced by something decidedly sardonic. “Any other method of tormenting Ms. Ritchi tonight won’t be nearly as satisfying as planting that little seed of doubt in her fragile mind.”

There was a resounding crash, and the air was filled with dust and debris as one of the walls tumbled inward. “I think the only seed that has been planted is that of your defeat, Megamind!”

Instantly, the room was filled with a flurry of activity, but Roxanne had seen these sorts of things enough that it was not long before her attention turned elsewhere. The direction of the battle taking place before her was predictable, and less than fifteen minutes later she found herself being dropped off at her house. Distracted though she was, she still managed to thank Wayne, who gave her a quick smile before heading back.

She dug her keys out of her bag to open the door and shuffled inside, kicking off her shoes in the entryway. The apartment was quiet, her roommates evidently still on campus. When she rounded the corner to the main room, she stared at the clock on the bookshelf. It was only a quarter before five. 

Her sigh as she sunk into the couch was both weary and relieved. For a moment Roxanne sat there, head resting back against the cushions as she stared at the patterns thrown onto the ceiling from the crystal decoration hanging in the kitchen window. There was plenty of time. Even if Megamind had played out his plan the way he had initially intended, she would have gotten home at a reasonable hour. She would still be able to get everything done for tomorrow that she had originally intended.

Yet the Psychology of Crime textbook remained unopened next to her, even after she had finished everything else for school and taken a long shower. With the way her thoughts had been going, she was starting to wonder if she would be able to find the motivation to change that.


	2. Growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That time when Roxanne makes a throwaway comment while backpedaling and it comes around to bite her.

As soon as she stepped out the doors of the Channel 28 offices, Roxanne knew today was going to be a kidnapping day. 

Over time, she had gotten a knack for sensing these things. Not a good enough knack to be helpful; it only hit a handful of moments before the event occurred, and she hadn’t been able to figure out exactly what gave it away. As little credit as she wanted to give Megamind, the means of her abductions were usually executed in a surprisingly professionally manner.

Whatever it was that made her aware, it was set off today. Roxanne was almost prepared for the moment when the cool mist of the spray hit her face not four steps from the building’s entrance. 

Her last slippery thought before unconsciousness was that the spray definitely had a light floral scent now; they must have cemented the new formula. She wondered why time was taken to make the spray pleasant when her complaints about that disgusting burlap sack had done nothing.

Thankfully when Roxanne woke up, the sack was absent. Blinking to clear her head of the lingering lethargy, she focused on the mask strapped over her face. Well, she’d returned to consciousness to find stranger things than this. At least it was protective gear.

“She’s awake!”

The hissed whisper came from somewhere in front of and below her. There was a lot of scuffling, and Roxanne rolled her eyes. It was always like this. Megamind treated every kidnapping like the opportunity for a first impression, which was frankly absurd when they were somewhere past a hundred at this point.

But as it was, Roxanne was less exasperated than she might have been. She had been fairly ambivalent toward the kidnappings in recent weeks, which she had noted, with no small amount of delight, was disconcerting to Megamind. 

It was just that life had been good lately, regardless of what inconveniences he threw her way. She had dealt with a string of difficulties after graduating, and it seemed that things were finally falling into place. 

Once she had dedicated herself to broadcasting, she knew it would take extra work to make a place for herself in a market as saturated as Metro City. What she had not anticipated was that her inexperience would be a secondary consideration when compared to the kidnappings.

She had known they would be a problem – how could she be relied upon if she was always getting randomly kidnapped? – but the issue had been with how the public would view her hiring. There was concern that viewers might think it had been motivated by the spectacle. It might generate interest, true, but nobody was willing to risk drawing the disapproval of the public if people decided she was being used to create stories rather than report them. 

By the time she had gotten to Channel 28, Roxanne had been desperate. As soon as she heard the typical spiel about the concerns of taking her on, she had emphatically told the interviewer that they could put her wherever they wanted. She didn’t even need to be anywhere close to a camera. She just wanted to get her foot in the door so that she could prove her value. 

She had been given a chance. She had been relegated to the research department, but she had gotten plenty of practice at that in college. At least it was work, and she was more than happy to be putting in her hours. It was all an investment toward getting where she ultimately wanted to be.

And slowly it was working. She already had a reputation around the office for getting her research in quicker than the rest of the team, and the newest location reporter had been requesting her help so frequently that they often met up for lunch. Today her boss had given her a clipped comment that she would shape into a good reporter, and the promise in that rare compliment had not escaped her. 

So things were looking promising. Even a kidnapping here and there hadn’t managed to throw off the momentum her career was gaining.

As Megamind stepped out from the shadows and approached her, Roxanne wondered what he thought of his own career path. None of his plots had even come close to defeating Metro Man. It had to be frustrating to never make headway.

For a moment, still clinging to the high of her boss’s words, she felt an edge of empathy. Until recently, she had also put in endless effort only to be met with a disheartening lack of progress. Perhaps she could cut him a break. Pay her own good luck forward by playing along. She wouldn’t do the screaming, but she could maybe give a startled gasp…? 

The thought immediately made her cringe around a laugh. As relatively benign as he was in his behavior toward her, his choice of career was still supervillain. There was no reason to empathize with that. This had definitely become too routine if any part of her brain could feel bad for him and his situation. 

The mask over her mouth obscured the smile pulling her lips, but it did nothing to conceal the pinch of her brow as she wondered at herself. Regardless of rejecting the idea of giving Megamind any sort of reaction, he saw enough of that expression to misread it.

His eyes were bright above his grin before he seemed to remind himself to school his expression into something more appropriately devious. He folded his arms as he reached her. “Ah, finally, Ms. Ritchi. For such a clever woman, you have been quite lacking in a sense of self preservation. It appears for once you understand how peri-lous your situation is.”

Attempting to speak proved that her words were intelligible through the mask, so she gave him the most dramatic eyeroll she could manage. By the annoyed way his brows lowered, the nonverbal message was received. 

“Surely you can appreciate that this is a horrific place to be stuck with no hope of rescue, which is surely what your situation is if Metro Man does not concede defeat.”

Roxanne followed the sweep of his hand around the warehouse. They were on unconnected catwalks that formed a T above some large pool of clear liquid. What she assumed was the same liquid was being poured on the catwalk to either side of her, leaving the one he stood on untouched.

Acid, maybe? Some caustic agent, anyway. That probably explained the gas mask. There must be some time limit before enough of the metal corroded for her to fall into the pool of it below, where she would then presumably die a splendidly ghastly death if Metro Man didn’t surrender.

She quirked a brow and shrugged. Indifference was the best way to really annoy him, and after he had mistaken her shock with herself for genuine fear, she felt the need to balance things. Besides, she couldn’t tell him her guess at the plot with the mask on anyway.

“Ms. Ritchi,” he began with real exasperation. “You could, for once, just play the game properly. I know you can tell what is going on.”

She supposed it was a compliment of sorts that he no longer assumed her lack of fear was due to lack of understanding. Still, a game? 

“Sir, are you sure she knows?” Minion’s voice came from the end of the catwalk. “I mean, it is a clear liquid. It might not be that obvious?”

“Oh, she knows,” he replied, still looking grumpily at Roxanne. 

“Well, if you had changed the mask design like I suggested so that you could hear her when she speaks, then you’d know for sure—”

“Minion—!”

If there was going to be more to that comment, it was lost as Metro Man suddenly appeared.

The shock of him instantaneously appearing– the air empty and then he was just there – tugged a scream from her, but the sound was eaten by the mask. Megamind flung himself back against the railing of the catwalk, eyes wide in confused panic. 

But before either of them could even begin to recover, Metro Man was speaking. “Gas line broke. Huge fires. I – I gotta go back. Can we cancel this one? Or postpone it? For like two hours?” 

The silence stretched as Megamind stared unblinkingly at him. Apparently it took too long; he turned to look at Roxanne. “Are you okay?”

Dumbly, she nodded.

“Alright, I’ll be back in a bit. Just… hang tight.”

And then he was gone, as silently as he had arrived. 

Leaving the rest of them all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“Uh, sir, maybe… we should go to ground-level while we figure out what to do?”

Minion’s voice seemed to snap some action back into Megamind. He untangled his hands from the railing and shifted his weight forward again. “Yes. Yes, let’s… do that. Code: Activate the Standby Protocol. I’ll… bring Ms. Ritchi down.”

“Do you need the spray?” 

Roxanne shook her head frantically enough that her hair snapped unhappily against the mask. Not the spray not the spray that’s so dumb it’s just a short walk…

Megamind considered her, still looking more than a little off-balance. “No, I don’t think so. If Ms. Ritchi promises to behave. For once.”

Roxanne felt a retort form on her tongue at that, but that was a pointless exercise. Grudgingly, she nodded. It honestly sounded like more trouble than it would be worth to pull any funny business. Wayne had already said he would come back, and she had nothing pressing that evening anyway. 

Besides, maybe she could use the opportunity to get some information out of Megamind. For as many times as he had kidnapped her, there had been few chances to try to question him when he was not fully in performance mode. He seemed a little off his game at the moment, so perhaps he would slip up and reveal something interesting.

“Okay!” Minion said, shortly followed by the metal clank of his footsteps on the stairs. “I’ll get something ready downstairs then.”

Megamind was frowning again as he approached her. He cautiously unlocked the chain keeping her against the railing before unholstering the de-gun. It glowed brightly against the shadows, the arc obvious when he gestured toward the stairs. “Ladies first.” 

Roxanne snorted in the mask but made her way down the long metal staircase. By the time they reached the bottom, the liquid flowing on the catwalk had stopped and a large ventilation shaft had opened over the room. 

“This way, Ms. Ritchi!” Minion said cheerfully, gesturing toward a door to their side. “It’ll be a little while before the air is neutralized, but the levels are low enough in here. I opened a window.” 

Minion ushered them into the room with the fluttering energy of a host welcoming guests. He showed Roxanne the seat he had found for her, and she felt her lips twitch at the fact that it was obviously the most comfortable of the three. 

“Oh, and let me take this off for you,” he said, pointing at the mask. “If you would just tip your head…”

He was waiting so cheerfully that it was impossible to insist on doing it herself. She turned her head as indicated and felt him unlatch the straps at the back, somehow avoiding catching any of her hair. 

“Thank you, Minion,” she said once the mask was off. She hadn’t realized how hot it had been wearing that until it was removed. The need to have an open window in the middle of July wasn’t helping, either. 

“I’m going to look for some water for you,” Minion said, already moving toward the door.

“You don’t need to bother,” Roxanne began just as Megamind piped in with “that is not what villains do, Minion!”

Minion shot Megamind a look. “If we want to keep kidnapping Ms. Ritchi, we can’t have her getting heat stroke,” he said seriously. He looked at Roxanne, and she was surprised by the disapproving edge to his gaze. “And sir has a point about the self preservation skills. It’s summer! You need to stay hydrated, and kidnappings can’t be easy on a human body. I’ll be back.”

They both watched the door for a long moment after he left. Roxanne was used to having to roll with a lot, but today was becoming a bit much. Was one of her kidnappers telling her to take care of her health? 

But it was Minion, so of course he was worrying. She couldn’t really be surprised by that because it wasn’t anywhere near the first time. He seemed to have fretting to spare for everything that circled his boss, and Roxanne would be lying if she said she didn't fit into that category. 

Eventually Megamind cleared his throat. “See,” he began, some of the bravado breaking through whatever remained of his shock. “Even Minion agrees with me.”

Roxanne choked out an incredulous laugh. “That was your takeaway from what he said?”

“Well, it’s true,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You obviously aren’t looking out for your safety when you don’t pay attention to all the dangers around you. You’ve been off for the last few weeks. Your behavior is really unbecoming of a damsel.”

“Oh, because you’re such a great example of a villain, after all,” she snorted.

He straightened sharply, jaw set and shoulders raised defensively. His expression shuttered, but not before she realized that her words had hit deeper than she had meant. 

There was a time when Roxanne would have been glad to know she had gotten to him that effectively, but somehow that look had her thoughts skittering to backpedal. Apparently she didn’t want to hurt him any more than he seemed to want to hurt her. She didn’t allow herself to dwell on that realization. 

“I mean, come on,” she hedged as her mind scrambled, leaning back into her chair and crossing her legs like she hadn’t just said something that clearly upset him. “There has to be some sort of playbook out there with suggestions for crafting your evil persona. Admittedly you’ve gotten the overall aesthetic theme down, but…” She gestured vaguely at him. “You know?”

“I do not ‘know,’” he said sourly, but she felt a little of her tension unwind. He just sounded affronted and annoyed; the hurt was leeching from his expression. Her angle so far must be okay. “The general, reasonable population of Metrocity seems appropriately intimidated.” 

“Yeah… but you don’t really respect their opinions, do you?”

He’d made enough comments about the dimness of the city’s citizens that they both knew he couldn’t argue. “Then what, exactly, do you find lacking?” he wondered, brow cocked as he finally took his own seat.

Okay, this was good. He was settling back into banter mode. Roxanne could play this game. She’d had plenty of practice. 

“Well, you’re kind of baby-faced, for one.”

“Baby-faced!”

“Yeah, baby-faced!” she said before he could sputter any further retort. “You’re decked out in leather and your outfit has more spikes every time I see you, and then not a single tattoo or piercing or anything!”

“Piercings!” He sounded scandalized by the insinuation, as though he hadn’t just been threatening her over a pool of acid fifteen minutes ago.

“Or I don’t know, menacing facial hair or something. You just have these big green eyes and your blush is really obvious any time you’re flustered and it just makes you look baby-faced. You basically look like you did when you started kidnapping me when I was in high school.”

“There are plenty of villains who don’t have tattoos or piercings or facial hair,” he responded even as the aforementioned blush dusted lavender across his cheeks. 

“Yeah, but they look scary already.” 

“Are you saying I don’t look scary?” 

There was something about the way the words tumbled out, as though they had spilled past his lips even as he tried to snag them back, that made Roxanne pause. 

Logically, he should want to hear that he was scary; it was part of why this whole discussion had been insulting, right? So why did she get the feeling that it wasn’t the answer he wanted? 

Well. She would have said the truth regardless. 

“No, you don’t look scary,” she said with a stupid amount of softness that she hadn’t meant to be there. 

He huffed a breath through his nose while his gaze shifted to the open window. The silence expanded, his throat bobbing once as he swallowed, before he seemed to pull whatever had been let loose together. “As I said, no safety awareness! Clearly your perception of what you should fear has become warped by your blind reliance on Metro Man’s ability to save you.”

She raised a shoulder. “I mean, he hasn’t failed to do so yet.”

The door flung open. “And I won’t do so now!” 

The routine had been so completely thrown off that there wasn’t even a proper battle. Megamind seemed to take stock of the fact that his hostage was free and Minion was absent and none of his plans were in a state to be activated and promptly launched himself out the open window.

Wayne made to follow, torso already leaning out, before he went slack against the sill. “You going to tell anybody I let him get away this time?” 

Roxanne noted the clear exhaustion on his face before shaking her head. “You did start going after him. There’s no reason for me to say how briefly.”

“Thank god,” he sighed with a weary laugh. “I just don’t have the energy to mess with this after everything going on today. We’re lucky the little guy just snatches you instead of blowing stuff up to get my attention.” 

“Lucky?” she asked, quirking a brow.

“Well, you know what I mean! I know it isn’t lucky for you,” he said quickly. He took a moment to wipe soot from his face while avoiding her stare. “But I think it’s lucky for the city. There are some villains our there who are legitimately scary, you know?” 

He was holding out his hand as he always did to indicate that he would take her home, expression apologetic. Grudgingly, she accepted it. 

“Yeah, I know,” Roxanne admitted as Wayne took her back to her apartment. 

The conversation – both with Wayne and with Megamind – lingered with her over the weeks that passed, weaving into the background of her thoughts. The population of Metro City was scared of Megamind, yes, but he just… wasn’t scary. As Wayne pointed out, there were actual atrocities he could commit to get his way if he wanted. And with everything he built, surely he could create some scene complex enough to prevent Wayne from managing to fix everything without a compromise. Hell, Megamind could probably have the whole city hostage if he really wanted.

But he didn’t. 

Because he wasn’t scary. And perhaps that was because he did not truly want to be.

That tone when they had spoken stayed with her. It had meant something, hadn’t it? There had been something genuine there, beneath the flamboyance that usually colored his conversations with her. Yes, he wanted a reaction from her, and he wanted her to adhere to the role he forcibly put her in, but regardless of all that, it had not seemed that he wanted her to be scared of him. 

Roxanne decided she was going to interrogate him about it the next time he kidnapped her. It had been a curiosity at first as the questions lingered, but as the days turned into weeks – four weeks, no less – her determination was set. The one time she actually had an interest in a kidnapping and he took longer than he had in years. She was almost affronted.

So as the bag was pulled from her head once he finally kidnapped her again, she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind.

And promptly snapped it shut again.

“I’m sure you had just begun to feel safe from the clutches of evil,” Megamind said, smirking at her from his chair. “But I’m afraid whatever comfort you found in the last month is at its end, Ms. Ritchi!”

She was trying to at least pay half attention to what he was saying, she really was. But. 

“You grew a goatee.”

He had, obviously, so it was kind of a stupid thing to say, but her saying it seemed to knock him off his train of thought just about as much as seeing it had knocked her off hers. 

“Well!” Megamind started, absently running a gloved thumb over the strip of facial hair before he forced his hand back to his lap. “Somebody was critiquing my presentation and I wasn’t going to let that stand.”

Roxanne forced herself to formulate a response. Why was this so difficult? “You actually took my advice?” 

He hummed and waved away the comment. “While your mental capabilities will never compare to mine, you do know your people best,” he reasoned. “It made sense to consider that you might have a useful perspective on the matter.”

He slid his chair closer so that their knees almost met. “I think you had a point. So!” He rolled his wrist in a gesture of clear invitation. “Appropriately evil-looking now?” 

Evil-looking was nowhere near the list of words Roxanne’s mind was choosing to supply, which was really inconvenient. 

She hadn’t been lying when she said he sort of had a baby face, regardless of the sharp lines of his nose and chin. His eyes were almost always too bright and excited to even approach intimidating, and as wild as his grin could be, it never seemed malicious. And when he was always so animated, it was hard for any expression that might have seemed threatening to stick for longer than a fleeting moment. 

There had been plenty of people who thought he was scary anyway, so maybe the goatee would add to that in their eyes. It succeeded in making it impossible for her to say he still looked baby-faced, and it did sort of balance the expressive lines of his eyebrows. Maybe she had been on to something. 

But she had still majorly miscalculated.

It looked… good. 

Roxanne should have said something by now, but her wit had apparently been knocked on its backside. Her brain was too stuck in the realization that there could be some sort of appeal to his appearance to follow the direction the conversation was supposed to go. 

He had been waiting for a response, all poorly concealed interest, so she saw when the anticipation in his gaze shifted toward assessment. His eyes narrowed as he looked over her face before his entire expression changed. An absolutely wicked smile spread across his features. 

He set his chin against his palm as he leaned closer, attempting to appear disinterested and failing miserably. “I’m afraid your own blush is also quite obvious,” he murmured smugly, throwing her words back at her.

And damn it, he was definitely right, because she could feel the heat of it in her cheeks and up her throat and this was not acceptable, because even ignoring the weirdness of her reaction, she could not handle him sitting there looking both shocked and pleased. 

Shocked and pleased and rapidly sporting the same flush he was trying to tease her about.

There was finally somewhere she could find some footing in this strange interaction. She sat up as straight as her restraints allowed and smiled sharply regardless of the heat still in her face. “Yeah, well pot, kettle.”

His self-satisfied smile instantly morphed into confusion. “What does this have to do with kitchen items?” he wondered, frowning.

Of course. She tilted her chin in his direction. “It’s just kind of funny that you’re trying to talk about me blushing while you’re blushing, too. I wonder what your blush is for?” 

Roxanne didn’t really think it was funny as her mind continued its frazzled attempt to process its reactions, but she could manage enough of a poker face to make the comment stick. She could play chicken with the hope that he would get flustered first. Usually it wasn’t too hard to accomplish. 

It worked. He considered her words for a moment before planting his feet and shoving his chair away with enough force to knock into the console a dozen feet behind him. 

“It is summer!” he babbled quickly, gesturing generally around him. “And I am wearing all leather!” 

“It’s pretty hot in here, too,” Roxanne allowed. She wasn’t above riding on the coattails of his excuse if there was a chance he would buy it.

“It is! The ventilation is not up to code, I can tell you. So physiological responses to the conditions are to be expected.”

“That’s at least one thing you’ve said that I can agree with.”

He shot her a look that did not seem convinced whether to be offended or placated by her agreement. He spun around to face the console. “Well, since the conditions are not ideal, we should get the plan started. Before anybody truly overheats.”

“Minion would be upset if either of us got heat stroke. He was worried about that last time.”

“Good point!” he said as he pressed a series of buttons and she suddenly found herself whisked into the building’s rafters. 

Roxanne was thankful for her relative distance from the rest of the situation. Megamind called Metro Man out as per usual, and there was some banter, and a little time before Wayne showed up and they had their battle. Roxanne was left to sit through it with her thoughts. 

By the time Wayne was returning her home, she had settled down. She was composed enough that he didn’t even ask any probing questions, and he had a real unfortunate knack for prodding at things she wanted to keep to herself.

“I bet you he singes it off within the next month,” he said good-naturedly as they approached her apartment. 

“He’s never singed off his eyebrows,” she pointed out.

“Ah.” He set her down on her wedge of a balcony and scratched his chin. “I guess the time he did was when we were still pretty young. I suppose you have a point. But still, it was a surprise! I wonder where he got that idea.”

“Probably from some idiot,” Roxanne said dryly. 

He laughed. “I dunno, it kind of works for him. Though now I suppose I’m going to have to stay clean-shaven forever.” 

Wayne bemoaned his fate before leaving to ensure that there were no issues with Megamind’s transport back to the prison. Roxanne leaned against the balcony railing and reaffirmed what she had decided while waiting to be taken home.

At this point she had known Megamind – in a manner of speaking – for a handful of years. He was ridiculous and over-the-top and used his talents in completely stupid and potentially awful ways. But he could also be entertaining to talk to, and she had to agree with some of his perspectives about the city and the way it was run, and he could be pretty funny when he left some of his showboating behind. Accepting those parts didn’t mean agreeing with him or overlooking the fact that he disrupted her life on a regular basis. 

So, similarly, apparently appreciating how he looked could be possible without negating the rest of the situation. It seemed pretty stupid that what tipped her over the edge of that realization was a dumb little goatee – it was practically nothing! It changed so little! Why would that do it? – but it had happened so it was what it was. 

The situation was surprising and unwelcome, but it was fine. It was just… a broader observation than ones she had made before. For a while now she had been rather fascinated by how ridiculously green his eyes were, so adding to the list wasn’t worth being concerned. It was embarrassing, certainly, but she’d only have to deal with being embarrassed with herself. 

“So progressive, Roxanne,” she drawled with a huff before turning to go inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So look at that, another chapter! It helps when it's finished. 
> 
> Anyway, this one was fun to write... cause when did he decide on the goatee? What was the progression of that? I have questions. 
> 
> Hope you guys like how dumb and hur hur-y my chapter titles are cause it's gonna continue like that probably.


	3. Desperate Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When expected promotions don't pan out, Megamind takes matters into his own hands. Or at least partially into his own hands, as Roxanne comes to find out.

It shouldn’t have even been a surprise that she would be kidnapped today. And of course it would involve that damn bag. The rest of the day had been awful, so why shouldn’t this cap it off?

Regardless of how exhausted she was, Roxanne was glowering when the bag was removed. “You better move this along real quick, Megamind,” she said as she looked up at him. 

He blinked at her before turning to Minion. “Why is she angry?” 

There was a quiet mechanical sound she figured was Minion shrugging. “I told you she didn’t seem happy when I picked her up.” 

“That’s because she isn’t happy,” she said as levelly as she could manage. “So she would appreciate it if this could get finished quickly and she could go home and be angry on her own.” 

Megamind looked at her suspiciously. “You still haven’t said why you’re angry,” he pointed out, eyes narrowing. “Is it because of your hair? Did somebody do that to you?”

Roxanne could feel the hot coal of annoyance getting closer to sparks by the moment. “Somebody did this to me, but that’s because I asked. So no, it’s not because of that.”

“Then what’s wrong, Ms. Ritchi?” Minion wondered, hesitantly coming into view. She had been unhappy enough about seeing him when he came to abduct her that he was apparently being cautious. “I thought today was supposed to be an exciting day?”

“It was!” she snapped. She stamped her foot for good measure and was distantly pleased by the way the sharp heel made the metal echo. “But apparently not for me.”

The two aliens considered her silently for a long moment before glancing at each other. Some unspoken agreement seemed to be reached as Minion unlocked her hands from their restraints. The one around her waist remained, but it was still an unexpected improvement. 

He gave her a sympathetic smile and awkwardly patted her shoulder once. He glanced at Megamind. “I’ll be in the kitchen, then?” 

Megamind nodded as he pulled over a chair from the far end of the room. He sat, crossing both his legs and his arms as he watched her. It was unexpected, but in the unusual quiet Roxanne could feel her anger begin to ebb in the rising tide of her disappointment. Which was a dangerous thing to do here, with this audience.

She tried to clutch onto her remaining annoyance. “What?” she said sharply.

“You… didn’t get the promotion?” he tried.

Somehow hearing it spoken was worse than Roxanne had expected it would be. How many more iterations of this conversation would she need to make in the next few days? 

It was difficult to meet his eyes. “No.”

He made a frustrated noise that bordered on indignant. She glanced at him and found him sporting his own glower. “What reason could they possibly give for that decision?” 

“That they ‘appreciate my investigative senses’, but they think Nicole has a ‘more palatable image for Metro City’s market,’” she said bitterly. 

Because that was ultimately what she had been told. Both she and Nicole had made the transition to location reporters at the same time, and they had paced each other over the last year. They had both filled in on morning broadcasts as well as evening reports for Channel 28, so when one of the coanchors for the primetime slots had announced her retirement, everybody knew the position would go to one of them. 

Except that even Nicole had thought Roxanne would get it. Everybody agreed she had handled the transition to sitting behind the desk better than Nicole. It wasn’t even a compliment; people just expressed it as though it were a fact. Roxanne had stupidly allowed herself to get swept into their certainty, which had made the meeting when the execs told her that Nicole was getting the job more devastating. She had been fully unprepared. 

“More palatable?” Megamind said the word like it tasted bad in his mouth. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that she looks like a polished professional while also managing to seem warm and approachable compared to… whatever I apparently am.”

“You mean a remarkably capable person and a compassionate and sharp reporter?” Minion piped up as he reappeared. In his hands were a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. 

Roxanne was grateful that she had worked to keep her disappointment from overwhelming her; if it had already swamped her, his words might have made her cry. She accepted the glass before balancing the plate on her lap when he passed it to her. Chocolate chip. Was this one of Minion’s roles? To offer a morale boost in the face of defeat? As she bit into one of the cookies, she figured it must be. The routine felt practiced. 

“Thanks, Minion,” she said softly. 

He bobbed in his tank, a sort of nod, before turning back to Megamind. “I’m going to make a fresh batch.”

“They’re always better that way,” he agreed.

Once Minion was gone again, Megamind shifted. “So,” he began slowly, as though he was trying to decide how to proceed when this situation was dramatically off-script. “You said you had somebody do that. To your hair.” 

She sighed. “I wasn’t thinking. They just… just the fact that they talked about how I appeared in broadcast made me so angry.” Even now, just mentioning it made the heat of her anger flare. “Like what I actually said didn’t matter because somehow I still look too much like the girl next door or something.” 

“Yes, I understand having your position questioned based on appearance.” 

Roxanne grimaced, because he had a point. She hadn’t realized he had held onto that conversation like that. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said, still too off-balance to think about the fact that she didn’t have to apologize to him considering what he frequently put her through. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” Megamind said with a start. “What you’ve said was never meant to be… well. It doesn’t matter,” he evaded, shrugging as though that comment didn’t hide a wealth of history. If she wasn’t so hurt and tired, she would have prodded. “Besides, it worked out well for me, so I can also understand the benefit of making a change. But this just seems…”

“Dramatic?” Roxanne supplied dryly.

Because, ultimately, it had been. She had kept her emotions locked down through the rest of her shift, but the minute she blew out of the station doors she had been on a warpath. They thought Nicole looked more mature than her? That she conveyed the right gravitas for the job?

Roxanne had only been keeping her hair long because she had heard so much about how that was the safe bet, but apparently it had done nothing to help her. Maybe chopping it all off would be more effective. 

She had taken the first available stylist at the shop she usually went to, and thankfully there was no attempt to talk her out of the pixie cut she had decided on while storming over. Even now, she wasn’t sure what it looked like. That had been a bit beside the point, but she wondered at the decision she had made. 

“I just wanted to be taken seriously,” she sighed as she dunked a cookie in the milk, mostly to give herself something to do. 

“I can relate to that,” he said with surprising seriousness.

Roxanne risked looking at him again. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that his expression was sympathetic. “You just didn’t deal with that feeling by having a temper tantrum and chopping off all your hair,” she pointed out. Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think anything he had done could be called a tantrum. Didn’t most of the villains in neighboring cities have all sorts of vendettas going on? But regardless of how often he failed, and how unflattering the coverage of his escapades was, his focus never veered from Metro Man. 

Megamind’s mouth quirked. “Easily avoided when there is no hair to chop.”

The comment tugged an unprepared laugh from her. His grin spread into a full smile. 

“Well at least that’s one mistake you won’t have to worry about making,” she pointed out. “I’m going to have to live with this one for a year at least.”

“I don’t think it was a mistake.”

Roxanne gave him an appraising look. He was suddenly very still, holding his posture awkwardly as though trying to avoid further attention.

Part of her wanted to poke at that and see how he evaded or crumbled, but all in all he had been accommodating today. It seemed in poor taste to tease him when he had been strangely supportive, even if the circumstances were still less than ideal. 

She hazarded a half smile and took her comments down a different path. “It won’t blow dramatically in the wind anymore. Are you sure that won’t be a huge disappointment to the aesthetic of your video feeds?”

“Ms. Ritchi,” he began, relaxing now that it was obvious she was not going to tease his comment, “the only thing disappointing about you is your complete unwillingness to play your part.”

“You could stop forcing me to audition,” she noted with false sweetness. 

“I’m sure you would like that, but unfortunately that is not to be your luck! As long as you hold special favor with Metro Man, you and your new haircut shall continue to fall prey to evil.” 

Megamind seemed to be gaining some momentum with this, and he hopped up from his chair. “In fact, Metrocity should be seeing a feed of its newest lead anchor being horrifyingly threatened beneath The Magni-fire, but now my plans are having to change because of this nonsense of some nobody being more worthy of the lead seat! It’s an insult! I won’t stand for being crossed like this.” 

He punctuated this with a sharp jab of his finger in her direction. “I’m afraid this kidnapping is going to have to be cancelled. There’s no point in unveiling this until you have the necessary job title and can report about my magnificent plot properly.”

“Cancelled?” Minion asked as he reappeared with a fresh plate of cookies. Even at a distance, Roxanne caught the waft of baking.

“Yes,” Megamind said, nodding as though a plan was rapidly coming together. “Channel 28 needs to be shown the error of its ways.”

\---

The next four kidnappings were… strange. All the normal components were there: the abduction, the gimmicky threat, the ultimatum, the battle, the defeat. Things progressed with the same pattern Roxanne had become used to, but there were just pieces that were off somehow. 

Like the fact that the general type of plot was always the same. And how just little pieces would change here and there, like the lighting or her position in the room or the way she was restrained. Even the banter had been similar aside from a refinement to a retort here and there.

And three times he had left schematics out where they were clearly observable from where she was, so she was able to assess them and the machines he had drawn up. He had never left information like that where she could see it. It was especially surprising since she could read his own notes on the shortcomings of the designs.

At first it had just been strange and surprising, but Roxanne was getting to the point where she suspected that there was some purpose to it. She just didn’t know what.

At least, she didn’t know until the fifth kidnapping.

She was on the apparatus from the second kidnapping with the lighting from the third. There was already a camera angled at her, broadcasting her from the moment the bag was removed, so she sucked in the typical dry remark she would have thrown at him and pulled on as professional a face as she could muster. 

“Disoriented, Ms. Ritchi?” Megamind wondered, hovering above her. He leaned against the controls of the machine he was riding and smiled. “I’m sure Metro Man and the rest of Metrocity feel similarly! With the power grid under my control, I figured I would leave you all in the dark in more ways than one! No clues about the plot today. We will see how well Metro Man can protect everybody against something he can’t anticipate.” 

Before she could say anything further, the apparatus she was on clicked downward. Megamind addressed the camera and gestured to Roxanne. “You have twenty minutes to find your precious Ms. Ritchi before I’m afraid there will be nothing left to find, or you can give me control of Metrocity. Just don’t forget that while you are distracted looking for her, I shall be… busy!”

So maybe regardless of his practice, the speech was a little lackluster; from her spot, she could practically see how difficult it was for him to keep from saying his plan. He must be particularly excited about the payoff to withhold the information he clearly wanted to share. 

But twenty minutes?? That was all? He’d never given such a short timeline.

Roxanne almost said something, but he had moved out of the angle of the camera and was giving her a strange look. Self-satisfied and sly and… expectant, somehow? He quirked a brow and looked pointedly at the camera before pushing the machine to accelerate out of the open hangar door. 

Okay, that was the icing on a very weird cake. 

Roxanne went over what she grasped of the situation. Today was, broadly speaking, more like the regular kidnappings, so whatever those last few had been about must be coming to fruition today. If that was the case, then there was some point to them. But what the hell could that be?

Megamind had tried a bunch of different variables and had settled on the ones he liked best. Those were playing out today. But he was condensing the timeline and putting Wayne in more of a crunch. 

The video was continuing to broadcast, but instead of positioning her in the bottom corner of the feed as he usually did when his plots geared up, the video trailing him was minimized while hers continued to take up the majority of the screen. From where she was in the hangar, with the doors still wide open, she could watch the flare of flames and lasers as his machines reached Metro City’s financial district. 

So she was being highlighted? The focus of this was on her? 

The apparatus continued its slow descent. Her vantage point of the city changed, bringing her better in line with the streets. She watched another swing of the laser through the sky, alternating between red and blue.

A detail bobbed to the front of her thoughts. Varied light frequencies a scribbled note had said at the bottom of his schematics. There had been a few comments about how to improve the performative elements of the devices while still utilizing the different, non-visible spectrum components.

Roxanne reflected on the notes. They had told her everything about how the devices would work and how he intended to utilize them and how they could be counteracted. 

And she had been put in the forefront of the video, with a twenty minute window for the full plan to unfold – perfectly timed for the evening news. She knew from glancing at the screens around her that the lighting and the angle were flattering. Everything about how she had been restrained and presented was dignified. 

He had nodded at the camera before he left.

Had he intended for her… to report? 

Maybe he had and maybe he hadn’t. Either way, it was undeniable that she had both the information and the means to share it. She might as well take the opportunity. 

Roxanne tugged on the professional air she had crafted for reporting. She recapped what had happened thus far, and what she suspected Megamind’s goal to be, and what she knew of the machines he was utilizing. The apparatus continued to lower throughout, making it so that the audience was continually reminded of her peril even as she calmly shared the facts as she knew them.

Once the information was out – how the machines could be defeated, the likely locations where he was sending them, where she was currently broadcasting from – things moved quickly. She could see the battle as it commenced, reporting what she could tell from a distance. 

Wayne arrived just as the apparatus lowered into the waiting pressure chamber. She thought she heard it click an extra two times, initiating the door to snap shut so that it could then be dramatically flung open a moment later.

Roxanne was firm on being returned home regardless of how Wayne tried to insist she go to the hospital. “What the heck was that about!?” he huffed, flying just a bit faster than was comfortable. Roxanne didn’t mind; it was focusing, in a way. “You could have really died this time!”

“No,” she said, her voice torn away by the wind.

“No?” he echoed incredulously. “You were in a pressure tank when I got there!”

“But I wasn’t until you arrived,” she said, still more focused on trying to piece together what that had all been. “That was just to be dramatic.”

He grumbled. “Well, he certainly had more of that going on than usual, which is saying something. Twenty minutes! I almost broke a sweat this time.” 

Roxanne actually smiled at that. She wondered if Wayne was more put out that he had needed to put actual work in than anything else. “I think there was more to what he was doing this time. I just don’t get what.”

“Let me know when you figure it out,” he said as they approached her apartment. “Cause I’d like to avoid a repeat if possible.” 

Roxanne agreed bemusedly, but the conversation was largely forgotten in the week that followed. The broadcast had gone viral by the next morning. Of course large scale confrontations between heroes and villains was nothing new, but apparently the angle of Roxanne reporting on it, as it happened, from within the situation, was novel. 

By the time she got into work, there was one email asking about her interest in relocating to another city – they had two supervillains, actually, vying for dominance against an aging hero who was supposedly looking for a replacement. The station thought she would be great at getting into the trenches of the conflicts and providing a perspective their city had never experienced.

By lunch, there were three voicemails on her personal cell, one call to the station, and eleven more emails. By the time she clocked out, she had needed to put her phone on silent. Notifications had continued to flash at her almost the moment she caught up with the existing ones. 

There had been requests for interviews and appearances, of course, but there were also numerous job offers. And not just any job offers – there were offers to be the lead anchor, or to be a co-anchor in a larger market, or to join a national broadcast team. Her head spun as she considered all the options that were suddenly on the table. 

But now that she had the opportunity to go – to do state-level news in a bigger city or national level broadcasts or even work internationally – Roxanne found that she wanted to stay home. She hadn’t realized how deep her roots now went until she had to test if she’d feel like relocating them. 

She started whittling down her options. There were a few at other stations in the area that were interesting, but her execs had also told her that they were reviewing their decision and might be able to offer her the position she had been denied.

Roxanne was grudgingly leaning toward taking that offer if it did end up being on the table when she got a call from KMCP. “We don’t have an immediate opening as lead reporter, but we will in six months,” the offer eventually went. “We’d like you to join the team immediately to get acquainted with everybody and aid in the transition. We are confident the package we can offer will be more competitive than what you currently receive.”

They were the preeminent station in the market. It was the best offer she could hope to get while still remaining in the city. Accepting wasn’t even a decision so much as an inevitability. 

She was kidnapped again after her first broadcast three weeks later. 

Megamind looked like he had won before the plot even started. “Channel 8’s promising new reporter, already at risk after only one shift,” he said, fully unable to keep any of his bubbling energy from his voice. He did not seem to be trying very hard. “I won’t be making the same mistakes as last time, so don’t expect to discover all the details!”

“That was the whole point before, though, wasn’t it?”

Because she had been thinking a lot about this. Why he had let her learn so much about what was going to happen. Why he had made sure she was presented favorably. Why he had allowed her to be the focus when it had been his scheme. 

“I cannot imagine what you’re insinuating,” he said with false affront. He still barely looked able to keep the grin from his face.

“You basically gave me a job interview,” Roxanne said pointedly, fanning her fingers even as the manacles around her wrists prevented her from moving her arms. “You let me get all the information that would make a good report.”

“Somebody other than those idiots at Channel 28 needed to see what you could do,” Megamind stated matter-of-factly. “It was just convenient to allow that to happen while accomplishing my other goals.”

This did nothing more than confirm what she had already suspected. “Why would you help me?” she wondered quietly. 

This was where her understanding always broke down. There was absolutely no reason for him to do what he had, at least in the way he had. Surely he could have blackmailed or threatened somebody into giving her the job if he had wanted her status to make his kidnappings more dramatic. Instead, he had provided her with the chance to earn the offers herself. 

“How presumptuous, Ms. Ritchi!” he declared. “I already explained that I had planned to kidnap the lead anchor and that the change to my plans had been an insult. I told you Channel 28 would regret their decision. The situation really has nothing to do with you – you just happened to be involved.” 

“You could have still kidnapped the lead anchor,” Roxanne pointed out. “It just wouldn’t have been me.”

“But it should have been,” he insisted, completely breezing by her attempt to point out the hole in his logic. 

She tipped her head. “Maybe they would have been a proper hostage.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t have been you,” Megamind declared, waving a hand as though the clear away her questions. “A villain does need their deeds to be relayed accurately, after all, and that has been fairly lacking in this city. For all your shortcomings as a damsel, I already knew you were worth taking seriously. Even before the haircut.” 

The statement was dropped into the conversation as though it wasn’t some strange compliment wrapped up in his absurd way of presenting things. Roxanne wrestled with how bad she should feel about wanting to accept it. 

“But it’s still a good haircut,” he said, almost to himself, as he adjusted a series of dials. His own words seemed to filter back to him slowly, and he jerked his head back up to look at her. “Not that I like it! It just makes things easier! Minion was always worried about it getting caught in things – you know how he is about safety – and now it’s not a concern. So that’s why I like it. Not because it looks nice. Because why would I think that? I certainly haven’t been thinking that.” 

He clapped his hands together as though the force of it would stop his rambling. “Ha! Well! Would you look at the time! It’s time for a battle! Where I am no longer talking to you about your haircut and what I think about it and how much of your neck is visible and-where-is-that-switch-ah-here-it-is!” 

Roxanne’s seat plunged downward with enough of a rush that she had to clench her jaw against a gasp. It was thankfully distracting, so she didn’t need to continue recalculating a new total for self-disappointment over being pleased that he liked her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kind words everybody! I'm glad it's been satisfactory thus far. We've already reached the half way point of this story, and while I did enjoy these chapters, it's the last three that I really had a fun time with. So. I'll be interested to see what ends up being the favorites for everybody else!


	4. A Taste of His Own Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the best way to settle a debt is with something money can't buy.
> 
> Well, aside from a bribe to the Warden. But that's beside the point.

Roxanne had never gotten a Christmas bonus before. Even as she looked at the pay slip, she wasn’t quite sure she believed it. 

Not that she was hurting for money these days. Seven months into working at Channel 8 and things were good. She had one month as lead anchor under her belt, and they still let her take field stories here and there. She had finished paying off her student loans. She had just fully settled into her new apartment, one with a huge balcony and an absurd number of windows that flooded the open interior with light. 

The transition to the new job had even been fairly easy and painless, all things considered. Her coworkers were largely pleasant people, aside from a few unfortunate exceptions. Wayne’s over the top congratulations flower arrangement had stirred up rumors of them dating to a fever pitch that she knew they were going to have to sit and talk about, but she'd mostly managed to get around any nosy conversations. 

Regardless, it hadn’t stopped Roxanne from hitting the ground running. She somehow had her dream job. She wasn’t going to nitpick the particulars.

And she knew she had to thank Megamind in part for that. True, he owed her for all the crap he put her through, but she could at least admit that this was one time when he had really done something to benefit her. 

Regardless of how much he tried to claim it had ultimately been for him. 

It was a totally stupid thing to feel, but Roxanne sensed the niggling edge of a debt unpaid. She had taken the chance that had been presented, but Megamind had been the one to set the stage for her to obtain her dream. She had spent the last half a year acknowledging that while also feeling the increasing push to do something in return. 

It was absurd, though. “What do you do when you feel like you owe somebody?” she asked her mother one time when she went home to visit.

“You find a way to pay them back,” her mom said bemusedly, as though the answer was obvious.

She gave her mother a wry grin. “Even when it’s Megamind?”

That had her mother balking and quickly fuming. Everything she said were arguments Roxanne had already made to herself – she didn’t owe him anything, she had gotten those job offers for the work she had done during that kidnapping, it was probably the least he could do after all the time she had lost being dragged into his nonsense, etc. etc. But while it was all true, she couldn’t fully convince her sense of what was right to accept it.

It was only made harder in these extended lulls between kidnappings. Things weren’t on a specific schedule, necessarily, but there was a general range. Roxanne could plan on no more than one kidnapping a week but no less than one every two weeks. It had been a regular pattern for a while, so now that they were at sixteen days she was honestly starting to worry.

It was almost like thinking about him summoned him. That evening after she had made dinner and settled in for the night, she heard the slider open quietly. 

Megamind hadn’t even gotten off the hoverbike; Minion had exited the attachment and was the one standing just inside the door. 

Megamind gestured at Minion. “Let’s get going,” he said with not even half his usual energy.

It was surprising enough that she completely spaced evading Minion. He gave her a pleading look as he sprayed her that lingered. It was was the first thing she thought of once she was conscious again.

Minion stood at her side, one hand on her shoulder. She almost suspected he had been trying to rouse her. “Sir will be back in a minute,” he said urgently in a low voice. “I think you should know… he’s not quite up to par.”

“Up to par?” she echoed with rising concern. What did that mean? 

“I don’t know,” Minion said, fins fluttering worriedly. “I tried to get him to call off the kidnapping, but he said he was already late and he wouldn’t listen to me and—” 

“Is she awake, Minion?”

Minion snapped upward and somehow managed to be a dozen feet away before Megamind rounded the corner. “Yes, sir! She just woke up! So we can get your plan moving along so she can go home and we can get back to resting…”

“That,” Megamind said as he finally came into view, leaning against the doorway, “is assuming an awful lot of Metro Man.”

“I just meeean… she’ll obviously get to go home once Metro Man gives up because he can’t defeat your diabolical plan,” he tried.

“Oh.” Megamind looked at him for a long moment before nodding his head. “Right. Yes. Of course.” 

Roxanne watched him make his way into the room. His steps had none of the bouncing energy she was accustomed to; in fact, he seemed to be making a path that allowed him to brace against something the whole way, regardless of how casual he tried to make it look. 

He all but collapsed into his chair before forcing himself to sit up. He blinked hard a few times before squinting at her. “Yes. Then she can go back to her nice warm apartment with its nice warm blankets and nice warm central heating system, which the Lair doesn’t have. Why haven’t I done that?”

“The heat signature, sir, remember?”

“Ah.”

Megamind looked truly awful in a way Roxanne had never seen. Now that she could assess him more clearly, she could tell how ashen his skin was, a true blue without its usual warm undertones. And his eyes were so flat; he was looking at her, but she was not sure how much he actually saw her. They were the sort of eyes she associated with fever. 

As though to punctuate her growing suspicions, he suddenly wrapped his arms around himself and crumpled downward as he made a truly horrific noise. It was a cough, maybe, but not like any she had ever heard before. It almost made her panic on reflex. 

“You’re sick!” she said, shocked and outraged in turns. 

“I don’t get sick,” he denied petulantly against his knees regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. 

Megamind cautiously lifted his head to look at her, but she turned to Minion. At least he could be reasoned with. “How long has he been like this?” 

“Pretty much the last two weeks,” he said, grimacing.

“Minion!”

They both ignored him. “He needs a doctor!” Roxanne said, shifting in her chair. “That… he sounds horrible!”

“No doctors!” he said urgently, some light flickering back in his eyes when she looked at him. 

And, okay, so that had been a stupid suggestion. A doctor was a shady half-step from a scientist, and sometimes not even that. She knew what a number of individuals in that community would like to do to him if given the chance. “Okay, no doctors,” she tried softly. “But Megamind, you need some sort of help. Isn’t there anywhere you can go?” 

The moment lengthened uncomfortably.

“There’s really only the prison, Ms. Ritchi,” Minion said awkwardly. 

For the first time, Roxanne found herself wondering exactly what Megamind’s life had been like prior to the days when he first became a publicly recognizable figure. When she had first become acquainted with him, she had been too annoyed and angry to want to know anything, and then things had just become so routine that she had not thought to ask those questions. She suddenly felt like a failure of a reporter; she was one of the civilians closest to him, and yet she essentially knew nothing about him. 

“Have they been able to take care of him there?” she asked.

Minion grimaced. “Yes, but he’s just never been like this before.”

“I am still cognitively capable of conversation,” Megamind said with a hint of his usual pluck.

“You sure?” Roxanne asked, turning a frown upon him. “You’re going around trying to do evil plots while this sick? That doesn’t sound very cognitively capable to me.” 

“That is none of your business, Ms. Prying Reporter,” he tried to sneer before dissolving into whatever that earlier coughing fit had been. 

Well, that was enough.

“Wayne!” she yelled as loudly as she could. Megamind recoiled, clutching his hands over his ears. She glanced at Minion and was relieved to see nothing but gratitude on his face.

It only took a second before Wayne breezed into the room in his civilian clothes. “What’s going on?” he said, head whipping around as he tried to assess the situation. “You never call. What did he do?”

“He’s sick,” she said.

Megamind tried to uncurl himself into something half-dignified. “Sick and still about to best you, Metro Man, so you better prepare—” 

“Oh boy,” Wayne said with a low whistle. “Alright, got it. Off to the prison.”

Megamind looked like he wanted to put up a fight but couldn’t quite scrape together the energy for it. Wayne plucked him from the chair and left, and then the room was quiet.

She felt the bonds on her arms loosen. “Thank you, Ms. Ritchi.”

Roxanne looked back at Minion once she was free, ready with a ‘no problem’ and a smile. But when she looked at him, there was a solemnness to his bearing that made her pause. 

“Anybody would have done it,” she said into the silence.

He emphatically shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t. Not now that he’s an adult, and only barely when he was a kid. It’s just been me looking out for him,” he explained. “I know you have no reason to care about what happens to him, so thank you. For caring at least a little.”

He gave her his toothy grin, and she felt something uncoil in her chest. She nodded wordlessly and let him take her back to her apartment.

Roxanne changed into her pajamas, and she sat in her warm home with a warm blanket and a warm drink. They were easy creature comforts; in the scheme of things she had been thinking about with her recent acquisitions, they hadn’t even been on the list. 

But Megamind had apparently been thinking about them all, because he had been sitting in a cold building for nearly two weeks while sick. It sounded beyond miserable, and she felt sympathy tug at her. It had already been roused just seeing him in that state, but now the sympathy was bleeding into her earlier considerations. 

She had wanted to pay him back somehow, hadn’t she? And she wasn’t going to compromise her ideals to do so, which marked out a lot of the things she knew he would appreciate. But Minion had said it himself – Megamind had only had one person who consistently cared for him. It was clear Minion did care, beyond any measure Roxanne could fathom, but what model had he had to draw from? They had arrived on Earth together, and Minion had insinuated that the only sort of home they had was the prison.

So. Maybe it wouldn’t be unreasonable to extend some extra care. 

\--- 

It sounded like it should be easy enough, but Roxanne ran into roadblocks from the start.

“But I’ve been in to do interviews with prisoners before,” she asked against the stark refusal to meet with Megamind.

“Prisoners who don’t break out within a few days of arriving,” the warden said gruffly. “He’s a special case. No visitors.”

She tapped her counter impatiently. “I can’t imagine he’s in much of a state to try to escape now,” she tried gently. “He looked awful.”

“And when he was a baby, he still managed to break out,” the warden replied. “I’ve learned to not underestimate him.”

This piqued her curiosity. “It sounded today like the prison is the only place that’s been home to him.”

There was a longer pause this time. “I hope you’re not trying to interview me, Ms. Ritchi, because this phone call will end very quickly if you are looking for information about him.”

“No, that’s not it,” Roxanne hurried. “I just wondered if what it sounded like was true. It seemed like the prison was really the only safe place for him to go. It’s why I called Metro Man to take him there.”

This answer still earned a pause, but it was less frosty this time. “It’s been a complicated situation.”

Roxanne knew that was as close to confirmation as she would get. She sighed. “Look, the reason I want to see him is to repay a favor.”

“A favor. From Megamind.” The skepticism oozed from his tone.

“Yes,” she replied, forcing herself to move the conversation forward. “I owe him, sort of, and I thought maybe I could bring something simple to him. A really nice blanket. Some soup. Things like that. I know he eats like crap.”

“That’s true.” It sounded like there was a war worth of battles in the weight of that response. “But it’d still require too much preparation. The logistics are too expensive.”

Roxanne looked at the edge of the counter, where her pay slip still rested. She could see the figure for her bonus. She didn’t let herself overthink her next words. “Say, if there happened to be a donation made to the prison, would that maybe make the process a bit easier?”

\--- 

Two days later, Roxanne was standing at the security checkpoint inside the prison while her belongings were inspected.

Currently, they were assessing the reusable canvas bag she had packed. The warden had emphasized only one bag; to the other prisons she might run into, it had to look fairly unremarkable. “I don’t need this becoming common knowledge,” he warned.

She had laughed. “Yeah, I don’t either.”

So currently the items in said bag were being reviewed. It was no different than she had mentioned to the warden over the series of calls between the two of them, and she saw the checklist as the guards noted everything. 

One large container of chicken noodle soup, homemade. 

One large thermos of cocoa, also homemade, with spices. 

A Ziploc of marshmallows for said cocoa. 

A bag of cough drops that were only mildly disgusting but highly effective.

A pair of thermal socks.

A pack of handwarmers. That one had caused a debate.

One extra fluffy blanket that had been put through the wash half a dozen times to make sure it was as soft as possible. She had rolled it as tightly as she could but it still poked out the top of the bag. 

The items were marked and repacked. “Alright, follow me, Ms. Ritchi.”

The guard took her down a long corridor before they went through security. They passed one of the cafeterias and a string of rooms and the visitation area. He took her through a separate door on the other side of the visitation room and gestured for her to enter.

It looked like the room had been retrofitted specifically for this visit; she wouldn’t be surprised to learn it typically functioned as a storage room. There was only the one door in and out and not a single window. The walls were entirely bare, but a table and two chairs had been bolted to the floor in the middle. 

Megamind was already there, looking only fractionally better than he had the other day. Unwittingly, Roxanne let out a breath. Fractionally better was still better. At least he didn’t look worse.

“Ms. Ritchi?” he blinked at her. His gaze was no longer completely flat. That was a relief. 

“Megamind,” she said with a nod as she took the seat across from him.

Her voice seemed to convince him that she was really there. He sat up straighter, shifting his hands so that the bolted chain between them slid enough for him to check his collar. 

She had seen enough of his mugshots to know what he looked like in this setting, but it was still somehow strange. It seemed they were both taking in the fact that this was the first time they had met in these circumstances.

“I’m touched that you miss me already, but I assure you that you won’t have to wait long for another meeting,” he said. Regardless of how he was trying to pull up his usual veneer, the confusion in his eyes was too obvious to sell the comment.

“Yeah yeah, I’m sure,” Roxanne sighed as she settled in. “How are you feeling?” 

He shifted further back in his seat, looking at her sidelong. “This behavior is really quite peculiar. I did not… somehow make you ill, too?”

For a moment, there was very real, very obvious concern in his features. She quickly shook her head. “No, I’m not sick. I just came to see you. And bring you something.” 

His brow furrowed. “Oh yes, that is much clearer. It certainly sounds like the behavior of somebody with a sound mind and not somebody who is sick and delusional.” 

Roxanne laughed despite herself. “What? Megamind, incredibly handsome evil genius and master of all villainy, doesn’t believe he would get visitors?”

“I’m not allowed visitors,” he said with rapidly growing suspicion. He looked fully unsure of what to make of her current teasing or the situation in general. She could practically see him trying to calculate the variables laid out before him and failing. 

“Must be my lucky day,” she chirped as she turned to her bag. “Alright, Mr. Sickly,” she continued, pushing through the indignant noise he made, “time for a care package.”

She set out the container, thermos, marshmallows, and cough drops first, pushing them all toward him at once. “Chicken noodle soup, from scratch. From my mother’s recipe, no less. She’d probably burst into flames if she knew I was sharing it with you.”

“She’d probably make me burst into flames first,” he said distantly as he touched the container. 

“Fair,” she agreed with a smile. One run in years ago and Megamind had clearly done what he could to avoid Mrs. Ritchi ever since. “I added extra vegetables though.”

Megamind pulled a face.

“And you’re going to eat them because they are good for you,” Roxanne warned, leveling a finger at him. “Save them until the end and chase them down with the cocoa.”

That piqued his interest. “Cocoa? Ah, that’s what the marshmahlows are for.”

“You don’t have any food allergies, do you?” she suddenly wondered.

“Nothing I’ve found so far.” He eyed her suspiciously. “You aren’t trying to find a weakness, are you? I assure you there are none to find!”

“I’m trying to make sure I don’t cause you to go into anaphylactic shock, genius. The cocoa has cinnamon and cayenne – they help clear my sinuses. I don’t know what you have, but it tastes good anyway. The cough drops aren’t as good, but they aren’t sugar free, so hopefully that balances out for you.” 

Roxanne grabbed the next batch of items. “You mentioned warm stuff,” she said, separating the items out. “I can’t provide central air, but I can do these. So there are handwarmers and socks and a blanket. I imagine it’s warmer here than in the Lair, but still. Cozy blankets are the best when you’re sick. It’s a requirement.”

He had been quiet for a few minutes now. When she looked up at him, there was absolutely no attempt to disguise his emotions, and the confusion and… and fondness was just there and what was she supposed to do with that?

It took him three false starts to finally get his reply going. “Ms. Ritchi,” he began. His hands fluttered against the tabletop, as though he would reach out for the items she had offered, before he curled them into fists. That was interesting, too; she had only ever seen him with gloves before. His skin was very bright against the stainless steel. “Why are you helping me?” 

Full circle. “I had the same question for you earlier this year,” Roxanne pointed out. “Back when you set up that kidnapping that led to me getting the job I wanted.”

“Channel 28 had disrupted my plans. I did it as revenge and to ensure I get proper coverage by a respectable source,” he said, almost reflexive and entirely defensive.

“Yeah, I know you said that,” she acknowledged with a lopsided smile. “So I guess I’ll say I’m doing this so you can get back on the kidnapping routine and ensure my viewership numbers stay high.”

He looked back at the items on the table, frowning. His brow furrowed as he considered everything silently.

Sighing, Roxanne stood and came around the table. She picked up the thermos and then leaned back against the table while unscrewing the cap. “None of this is going to do you any good by you just staring at it,” she said with less bite than she might have used. 

When she finished pouring some of the cocoa into the cup, she held it out toward him. “Alright, let’s get evil’s scathing review.”

He lifted his chained hands and cautiously reached for the cup. For a moment, his fingers rested against hers. 

Roxanne stilled. Because. She had just been thinking about it, hadn’t she? That she never saw his hands, because of the gloves. Which meant he had never actually touched her before, either. 

His hand didn’t feel any different than a human hand, really. She only allowed herself to think about that observation and not the other inconvenient ones that tried to slip in.

Megamind glanced up at her. It had to be because of how sick he was, but there was nothing of the usual posturing or cockiness in his expression. “Thank you, Roxanne,” he said, sincere and looking half like he regretted it. He quickly took the cup and pulled his hands away. 

She folded her arms and cleared her throat. “I didn’t spend my day off doing this for you to waste it, so you better eat all of the soup,” she threatened as best she could before shoving away from the table. 

“I’m afraid I don’t take orders from you, Ms. Ritchi,” he said haughtily. 

Oh good, she was back to being Ms. Ritchi. That was a relief, honestly. Without another example, she could pretend that hearing him say her name had only made her feel surprised. 

“Of course you don’t,” she said as she folded her now empty bag. “But I’ll hear what happens to everything I brought, and I’m sure Minion will be interested in an update.”

“You would turn my own lackey against me?” he asked, trying to look affronted even as he smiled. “How devious.”

“Well, I had to pick something up after being around you so much,” she quipped as she knocked on the door to leave.

Megamind looked momentarily stunned at this response before positively beaming. “I could teach you a lot more than that if you wanted to change sides,” he said as smoothly as he could. With the eagerness touching its edges, it was admittedly not that smooth.

Roxanne huffed a laugh as the door opened. “Just get feeling better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everybody who has commented! I'm sorry it took me a little longer to get this chapter out, but being violently attacked by illness will do that to you. Hope you enjoyed all the sap! Cause there's definitely gonna be more where that came from. 
> 
> How far can I stretch these chapter titles until they break I wonder.


	5. A Bit of a Predicament

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The obligatory "she gets kidnapped by somebody else" chapter.

There were some things that, for all of his posturing, Megamind always seemed to ensure regarding her kidnappings. Roxanne was never confined in a way that was painful or that required effort to avoid pain. Hell, half the time how she was restrained was more or less comfortable. And she knew he had done what he could over the years to improve the spray so that the transition back to consciousness was side-effect free.

So waking up feeling disoriented and sore was the first hint that something was wrong.

They had finalized the formula years ago. Why would she be groggy? And why were the ropes so tight around her wrists and… ankles? Had she been hog-tied? And what was with the gag?

What the hell was going on?

“She’s awake.”

Roxanne froze. This voice was all gravel. There was none of the giddy excitement she was used to from Megamind or the familiar warmth from Minion.

This was somebody else.

“Good. Tell the boss.”

Her heart picked up speed as the realization took hold. She had been kidnapped, but this time it wasn’t by Megamind. Which meant that anything she could have expected was no longer in play.

“Ah, the ever-famous Roxanne Ritchi,” came a voice from the shadows, falsely sweet. “I admit that it was a surprise to get you so easily considering the people who are always around you. I thought for sure they’d make it a challenge.”

The owner of the voice stepped into her line of vision. He was going for some posh, refined look; he had an altered tux on, lined and embellished with gold fabric and detailing. His face, in contrast to the opulence of the outfit, was concealed behind a simple black mask. The look was familiar, and as Roxanne cleared her head she pulled the name together. 

The Domino. A villain who had gained control of a mid-size city a state over and was clearly working to make a name for himself. Apparently he had outgrown his old stomping grounds and was looking to expand. 

She watched him cautiously as he knelt before her. Normally she would have questions - even after years of being kidnapped by Megamind, she still tended to have questions - but there would be no asking them this time. Her mouth already ached where the gag pulled against her lips. 

“You’ll have to forgive the set up,” he said, waving a hand at her. “I know you’re used to a more accommodating arrangement than this, but I can’t have you screaming for someone with superhearing before I get things rolling. For what it’s worth, I would much rather have that pretty little mouth uncovered.”

He followed this with a smile that looked like it was meant to be charming but instead made her stomach roil.

This was another difference. Megamind would never have made a comment like that. Sure, maybe there had been a little shift in their banter over the past couple years. It had been innocent enough. She hadn’t even noticed it; Wayne had been the one to awkwardly bring it up during one of their fake dates. 

“I mean, you’re not exactly subtle,” he said, cringing against the force of her amused indignation. 

Roxanne had laughed again. “Wayne, bantering and flirting are not the same thing.”

“Are you sure?” he muttered uncomfortably. “They look the same.” 

“He’s just fun to tease,” she explained, waving her fork. “He makes it so easy.” 

“Well, you both seem to enjoy the teasing an awful lot.” 

Roxanne snorted. “I need to entertain myself somehow. My brain would rot if I had to just sit there.”

He shifted. “I just think, if we’re pretending to date, that you should make sure you don’t give the people wanting a scandal anything to overanalyze. You know those trashy magazines will jump on it - they already like to speculate.” 

It wasn’t that he didn’t have a point, but Roxanne had been a little insulted that he was trying to explain the PR machine to her. She had been in its crosshairs for all of her adult life, and she had learned to twist it in the ways that best suited her; that was part of why they maintained the ruse of dating, after all. She wasn’t going to do something to compromise her position just for a diversion in the weird feature event of her week. 

So maybe if she thought about it objectively the banter could sort of be flirting. It didn’t mean anything, though, so it really couldn't count. It was just part of the game in its own way, some evolution to their interactions. She doubted Megamind was aware of what it could look like. If she even hinted that he could be flirting with her, she was sure he would become an absolutely useless mess.

There was certainly no way he would continue if she had indicated that it made her uncomfortable, though. There were many lines that he danced on, but that was one she was sure he would not even push, much less cross.

This man was different. If his leer wasn’t enough to unsettle her, the general unknown of his behavior would be. She didn’t know anything but what her still addled brain could recollect, and all it had to offer were snatches of details from reports she had seen and provided. He was impatient and erratic, as far as the police were concerned. In his public escapades, he was prone to sudden escalations of violence with little warning.

Roxanne didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what she could do.

“Everything’s in place, sir.”

The Domino turned toward the voice and smiled. “Excellent. I think it’s time we call to get rid of the competition.” He glanced at Roxanne, smile growing. “I think she’ll be as good a lure for him as she is for Metro Man.”

Even as he said it, all smug confidence, there was a series of crashes and thuds. There were a few cut-off screams and yells, but then only eerie silence. It knocked the smile from The Domino’s face as he jumped to his feet.

“It sounds like you wanted to see me.”

Roxanne had heard Megamind’s voice so many times over so many years, but she had never heard him sound like that before. His tone was frigid and reserved, carefully structured as he dropped the words into the room. For the first time, he sounded devastatingly serious. If she didn’t know him, she would have thought it was the voice of somebody who could truly be a villain.

Yet for all the strange coldness and the threat behind the tone, Roxanne felt a wash of relief that was shocking in its intensity. Megamind had never let her get hurt before. She had the strange certainty that he wouldn’t let it happen now. 

“Ah, yes!” The Domino attempted to regather his poise, changing his stance to try to appear more intimidating. He looked around him, searching for Megamind’s location while discreetly gesturing for more of the henchmen to check what had happened. “I thought that perhaps we should talk, villain to villain.”

“Villain to villain?” There was a sneer in his words. A moment later, there was another series of banging and screams. Roxanne guessed it must have been the reinforcements that had just been sent. “I think you overestimate yourself.”

For a moment, The Domino looked thrown off by this response before his expression hardened. “Oh, I don’t know. You came anyway.”

“Not for you.”

The smile flickered back to The Domino’s face. It was the look of somebody remembering a forgotten trump card. “Yes, I imagine you’re here for her.”

The Domino pulled a gun from his waistband, an old blunderbus with a series of modifications that looked shoddy compared to the work she had seen on the de-gun. The remaining henchmen in the room widened their perimeter, drawing their own guns as they looked into the darkness.

The Domino pointed his gun at her, not more than a foot from her face. “I think you'd best come out now so we can have that talk I want, or else you will find yourself looking for a new hostage.”

What followed was a frenzy. The Domino stood, self-confident and threatening, and then his arm flew upward. The gun was knocked from his hand before he even had a chance to fire, and he was then flung to the ground away from her in a blur of blue and black. 

The subsequent struggle was so short; even though The Domino had at least a foot on Megamind’s height and who knew how many pounds, he was suddenly pinned facedown, one arm contorted awkwardly behind him with Megamind’s knee digging into his back.

He also had the de-gun out and pointed at The Domino. The remaining henchmen, apparently still too stunned by the speed of what just happened, stood in a stupified circle around their fallen boss.

Megamind looked at them, his gaze level and unreadable. “I know there are plenty of villains who would like to move into Metrocity,” he said, loudly enough for everybody to hear. “And I’m happy to field fair challenges. But,” and here some of his collected coolness shuddered, revealing the fury behind his words, “there are rules. And the first one you should have learned was that Ms. Ritchi is my captive.”

He pulled the trigger and The Domino disappeared into a flash of light. Megamind had already stood before the resulting cube clicked softly against the floor.

“Anybody else?” He swept the de-gun around the room. The henchmen cringed backward. “No? I’m a decent shot from a distance, so don’t be shy about using your own guns. It’d be fair.”

His slow circle allowed him to draw closed to Roxanne. “Alright.” He glanced down at his watch and smiled. “Then I think we’re done here.”

The bowg of brainbots hummed in the air as he finished speaking. Glancing up, Roxanne saw them flooding into the warehouse through the windows. The henchmen who had not already been backing away scattered as the brainbots located them and gave chase, flushing them from the building.

And then the threat was gone. And she was fine.

And Megamind was kneeling down beside her, rapidly removing the gag and untying the ropes. He was muttering something, his expression absolutely livid, but somehow she couldn’t hear what he was saying. 

Roxanne had the same sick feeling from back in high school, that first time Megamind had kidnapped her when she hadn’t known what was going on or what was going to happen. But this time it hadn’t been some vague threat of harm; this time she had stared down the barrel of that gun. 

“Roxanne?”

When had he taken hold of her shoulders? Roxanne blinked, trying to pull her focus together. Some of the anger had melted from his features to make room for the growing concern. How many times had he called to her before she had heard.

“Are you okay?” 

Her chronic kidnapper was asking if she was okay. After he had just saved her from a different kidnapper. 

Roxanne was laughing before she could stop herself, the sound strangled and shuddering and more than a little unhinged. Megamind’s eyes widened, brows drawing up in surprise, before the tears that immediately followed had him releasing her and jumping to his feet.

“Should I call Metro Man? Should I take you to a hospital?” he asked quickly, hands raised as he frantically looked around, as though the room might have the answers for what to do. 

Roxanne rubbed at her eyes as the tears continued to spill down her cheeks. How embarrassing. She wasn’t even entirely sure where the tears had come from. Wasn’t she more composed than this? She hadn’t even cried the first time she was kidnapped, and she had been a teenager.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. She pushed her dignity into the background as she reached out for the edge of his cape, just within arm’s reach. “Home,” she said, voice cracking. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Just take me home. Please?”

Megamind was silent for a long moment before nodding. He fidgeted momentarily, uncertain, and then extended his hand toward her. The voice that should have told her not to take it was silent. 

For as much hesitation had been in the gesture, his hold was firm as he helped her to her feet. It took her a moment to get her footing, the circulation prickling in her legs. Megamind waited as she shifted her weight, still holding her hand, but he was glowering again.

Roxanne followed the line of his gaze as she wiped the last of her tears from her face. He was looking at her wrist, raw and already bruising from the pressure of the ropes. With everything else, she had not noticed. 

“It’s okay,” she dismissed, because in the scheme of things this was nothing. It certainly wasn’t what she was most impacted by.

“It’s not okay!” Megamind said sharply. His hold of her hand momentarily tightened before he let out a forced breath from his nose and let go. “It’s unforgivable. Apparently there will need to be a reminder of what behavior is allowed.”

Roxanne didn’t have it in her to disagree or try to question what he meant, so she simply followed as he led her to where the hoverbike waited outside. He frowned at it. “I didn’t really… have a plan,” he admitted. He helplessly gestured toward the seat; there was no separate attachment today.

“It’s fine, Megamind.”

He didn’t look like he completely believed her, but he made no further comment. He bounced on the balls of his feet once before unclasping his cape and mantle, distractedly rolling it into a ball as he climbed onto the bike. 

Roxanne slid on behind him without waiting for him to indicate that she should. He let out a strangled noise when she wrapped her arms around his waist. 

“I have to hold on, don’t I?” she wondered, suddenly second guessing herself. She hadn’t been thinking when she did it; it just seemed like the obvious next step. “That’s why you took that off, right? So it wouldn’t be in the way?” 

“Yes,” Megamind confirmed, regardless of the tension in his voice. “Yes. It’s fine. I suppose it would be best if you held on tightly?”

Even though the recommendation was unsure, Roxanne accepted it as he turned on the bike and angled its path above the buildings. If he made any other sound, it was lost in the wind. 

By the time they reached her apartment, Roxanne was feeling more like herself. Enough of the shock had worn off, and the coolness of the breeze had been cleansing. There was thankfully no threat of tears now.

Megamind maneuvered the bike beside her balcony, hopping down over the railing and then again offering her a hand. It was almost nice to see that there was no hesitation this time. 

He held on for just a brief moment longer than was strictly necessary, but she did not have the energy or motivation to call him on it. This was wildly outside the norm; beside tonight, the only other event even remotely similar was when she had visited him in prison. 

Roxanne’s thoughts slid back to that afternoon. For a moment then, he had touched her hand without wearing the gloves. She found herself wondering, hand still within his, what it would be like to actually hold his hand when he wasn’t wearing them, too. 

Before the thought could go any further, Megamind hopped away and slid her door open. “You should go inside,” he said decidedly before his brow furrowed. “Perhaps there is something else you need, though? Like soup? Or cocoa? Ah, but that’s only for when you’re sick, I suppose?”

With a comment like that, it was impossible to act as though his thoughts had not been on at least a similar track as hers. Roxanne smiled faintly. “I might make some cocoa. It’s not a bad idea.”

Megamind nodded. “It’s useful in many situations. If Minion were here, he would be able to help, but I haven’t made it myself before…”

“You’ve already done more than enough,” she said quickly.

“Ah, of course,” he said, cringing as he obviously completely misunderstood. “The Domino was calling me out, after all, so that’s fair.”

God, how could he be such a genius but also such an idiot? “No, Megamind, I didn’t mean that.” Roxanne folded her arms around herself as she reviewed her thoughts from the flight back. She watched him, his wary expression clinging to curiosity. “You saved me.”

He pulled himself up to his full height, looking ready to disagree on instinct, but there was no way he could actually argue with her. 

“No, you did,” she insisted, stepping forward before he could make an attempt to counter her. “You did. I don’t know how you knew to come, but it wasn’t Metro Man who saved me. It was you.”

Megamind looked away. “I’ve told you before that Metro Man isn’t as perfect as all of you believe,” he said haughtily. 

She knew him well enough at this point to read through the deflection. Her smile spread, exasperated but inarguably fond. “Thank you,” Roxanne said simply. Because ultimately that was what he needed to hear. She was grateful, and he needed to know. 

Megamind lifted a finger between them while clearing his throat. “You shouldn’t thank me, Ms. Ritchi,” he said, somehow scraping together some of his bravado. “This event has made me realize that I need to take enforcing this arrangement more seriously. I will be sure that it is well understood that nobody else is allowed to so much as interact with you. And once they understand that, you will have to resign yourself to being exclusively kidnapped by me! You will have no escape!”

“Good,” she said airily. “You're the only one I want to kidnap me anyway.”

And oh, shit, that had been a step too far, hadn’t it? 

Megamind’s eyes were like saucers. He swallowed and opened his mouth twice before he managed to find his voice. Roxanne did her best to look like there were no uncomfortable implications that could be read into what she had just said. “Well that’s convenient then! Because you have no choice in the matter anyway!”

He moved toward the bike, as though he was the one who needed an escape. Roxanne wasn’t going to fight him over it; she needed some space as well. She stepped back toward her door.

Even with a foot up on the ledge of the balcony, he paused. “And you’re sure you’re fine?” he wondered, apparently needing reassurance that he wasn’t missing something that should delay his desire to flee. 

“Yes, I’m really fine. Thank you again for that,” she said. 

“Good. Yes. Well.” He hopped on the bike. “I couldn’t let him actually hurt my only kidnappee.” 

“He did point out that you could look for another one,” she suggested. “There are plenty of people in the city.”

He glanced at her briefly with a resigned smile. “As though I could ever replace you, Ms. Ritchi.”

Roxanne didn’t have any idea what to say to that, and thankfully he clearly didn’t want to know what she came up with; he gunned the bike and shot off into the night before she could fully process his words.

She slipped back into her apartment. They had talked about cocoa; pulling out the ingredients was a mindless task that gave her something to do as she tried to sort the disarray of her thoughts.

At the forefront, though, was the fact that maybe the flirting had been more dangerous than she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well it had to happen at some point, cause it's just too juicy of an idea to leave alone. I warned you that this story hit a bunch of tropes hahaha.


	6. At the Heart of Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was time for the head and the heart to come to a consensus.

The one thing Roxanne needed and the one thing she hadn’t gotten was time.

She had needed time after discovering that Hal had apparently quit because he now had super powers. She started to have that time on her date, calming in Bernard’s company, but then it hadn’t been Bernard. It’d been Megamind, always Megamind, the whole time as she found her footing after Wayne’s death and gained a goal to work toward and somehow started to fall in love. 

And it hadn’t stopped there. Even as she held onto the sharp edges of the betrayal to avoid thinking of the way her heart hurt, there had been more. Hal turned evil and was destroying the city. Wayne was  _ alive _ . She had felt like she was living in a snowglobe, where all the pieces of her reality had been shaken and changed in an instant.

Since nothing made sense and nobody was being who she thought they were, Roxanne figured she might as well be the same. If nobody else was going to confront Hal, that just left her. 

It hadn’t worked. But her plea to Megamind had. 

Roxanne didn’t have a word for what she felt when he arrived, just as she was starting to accept that she would die there, trapped on that building. It had flooded her, a mix of wild joy and shock and relief and something else that made her heart feel constricted within her ribs. 

The feeling hadn’t gone away. It lingered when she had thought he was dying, and when she had realized it wasn’t Wayne but Megamind chasing Hal from the city, and when he had rehydrated in the fountain and won. 

It was still there now, increasingly heavy and insistent, as she watched him direct the brainbots in the initial cleanup efforts. That’s when Roxanne knew. She hadn’t had time to think before. She needed that time now, before she let her heart make decisions that would be painful to take back.

It wasn’t easy asking to be taken home, because strictly speaking it wasn’t what she wanted. Life threatening situations sure had a way of making things seem simple. But. The heart and the head needed to get on the same page. And that would require some time.

Megamind was surprisingly tactful about it when she managed to force out the words. He reeled in his effusive energy - at having survived and won and gotten the city’s thanks, on top of it - and gave her that cautious smile. “Of course, Ms. Ritchi,” he said, and, ah, she hadn’t realized how much it would ache to not just be  _ Roxanne _ . “Perhaps it would be better if Minion took you?”

She wanted to say no on reflex, but time away was the point, wasn’t it? “If he doesn’t mind.”

He didn’t, and Roxanne found herself being driven home in the passenger seat of the invisible car. It still drove fine, regardless of the wind that whipped through the cab from the lack of a door. Still, aside from the noise, it was an improvement from her usual vantage point tied up in the backseat. 

For most of the ride, Minion was silent. It was only when they neared her building that he drummed his mechanical fingers against the steering wheel and breached the obvious subject hanging in the air. “I haven’t gotten the full story of what happened,” he started slowly. “But the whole lie thing came out, didn’t it?”

She nodded. For the first time, she wondered how much Minion had been involved in that deception.

He heaved a sigh. “Sir had seemed oddly eager to address things away from the lair. I thought it was just that he finally had something to focus on, but once I found out exactly what that was… we had a fight about it. I even left.”

Roxanne risked a glance at him. She had witnessed plenty of moments of exasperation between Megamind and Minion, but it was impossible to imagine one without the other. “Must have been quite the disagreement,” she noted, hoping he would offer more.

“It was. He said a lot of things that were a shock.” At this, he looked back at her. “Like that he might not want to be the bad guy anymore.” 

It was surprising, but she wasn’t willing to read anything into why Minion felt like sharing that detail. “Well,” she started with a lopsided smile, “I guess he’s got that going for him after today.”

Minion laughed, more than a little weary. “I guess that turned out okay, surprisingly. But Ms. Ritchi, you need to know that it was because of you.”

There was certainly something she should say, but the words escaped her.

Minion pushed forward before she could come up with something. “Not  _ only _ because of you. I think this has been in the background for a long time. But being around you helped him start thinking it was possible.” 

What should she say to that? “Sorry?” she tried.

“Oh no! That’s not it at all. I was surprised, but I don’t think it’s bad… not now at least. I’ll admit that I didn’t think the city would actually accept him.” He paused. “Or that you would, when you finally found out the truth.”

“I was really mad and hurt,” Roxanne agreed. “I still am, honestly.”

The silence stretched. He reached her apartment, stopping at the curb, but she made no move to leave. 

He seemed to read into her silence. “But?”

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it. “I really like him, Minion,” she admitted. The fullness in her chest was still there with every heartbeat, calling her a liar.  _ Like _ . As though that explained it. “But it’s just really complicated. There’s a lot of history between us, but it’s not all good. I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”

“Well, I have full confidence that you’ll figure it out,” he said with a toothy smile. “I didn’t mention any of this to push you one way or the other. I just thought you should know that you really did impact him. The face he used wasn’t real, but I think everything else was. Maybe even more so because he didn’t have an image to uphold.”

Roxanne had already considered that, in the brief few hours she’d had to herself in the whirlwind of the past day. She had already accepted that so much about Bernard had been comfortable because she had already become comfortable with those parts of Megamind. Regardless of how briefly he could reveal them before the showmanship was in place, she’d seen enough to enjoy that side of him. 

She didn’t need Minion to tell her that most of it had been real. For a moment, Roxanne considered that confrontation in the rain, how he hadn’t made any attempt at all to keep his emotions from his face. It had been painfully easy to read the truth of what he felt for her. Even on that miserable walk home when she questioned everything that had passed between them, that had been one thing she knew had been true.

She took a deep breath, fingers knotted in her lap, before she let the words balanced on her tongue tumble out. “You should tell him to be here at 10:00 tomorrow morning. I’ll have coffee.”

Minion’s expression instantly brightened. This was clearly more than he had expected. “I’m sure he’ll be here at 10:00 sharp.”

Roxanne gave him a tight nod before slipping out of the car and up to her apartment. She stepped out of her ruined slippers as she walked to the couch and unceremoniously dumped herself upon it.

Well, she’d given her thinking time a deadline. And she knew a large reason for that was because she already knew what she wanted to do. How things ultimately played out would now depend on what Megamind had to say in the morning.

As for the rest… well. The hurt was still there. Wayne might be alive - and that was a whole separate issue that would need addressing - but that didn’t negate the fact that Megamind had initially been elated about his apparent success at killing him. And he had deceived her for weeks with seemingly no qualms about continuing the charade indefinitely.

Roxanne should have known.

She was a reporter, for heaven’s sake! Shouldn’t she have questioned how strange the situation was from the start? Walls and ceiling removed? Formal speed-walking? Hell, he had even asked her during that disastrous date if she would still enjoy his company if he was bald and had the complexion of a primary color! Could he have been less subtle? How could she have missed all the clues?

Roxanne stared up at the ceiling as the kinder part of herself tried to get heard. It had been because she hadn’t been looking. Because she finally found some comfortable foundation to steady herself on after the upheaval that followed Wayne’s death. She had been mourning, and while the vast majority of it had been for the loss of her friend, there had been the piece that had mourned the loss of her strange almost-friendship with Megamind.

Because they had been, in a way. She had somehow actually thought everything had been for show. Sure, he could sell the supervillain thing well enough to the masses, but she had always had front row seats. He had never hurt her. He had never come close to actually hurting Wayne. He had never done anything that actually resulted in civilian injuries. 

Villains didn’t limit casualties. Villains didn’t glance at their captives to see if the corny pun of their current plot got an unwilling smile. Villains didn’t talk about life plans or musical preferences or help create job opportunities. For all his claims of being evil, Megamind had come to just be silly and annoying and clever and fun. 

And she could enjoy his ridiculousness and their banter. That night he had saved her from that other kidnapping had shown her how much she had slid toward just enjoying  _ him _ . 

But then, not two months later, there had been the death ray. And the way she had started to feel had just made the fallout and the sense of betrayal worse. 

What an absolute mess.

By the time Roxanne convinced herself to get up and shower before she fell asleep on the sofa, the soreness from everything had settled in her muscles. Her shower revealed that the bruises were starting to make their appearance, too, and by the time she stepped out and dried off she had no motivation to try to stay awake. She grabbed the closest bottle of painkillers, chasing a few down with water from the bathroom sink before turning off the lights and tumbling into bed. 

Somehow, it was a blessedly dreamless sleep. She awoke when the sun tugged itself over the horizon; she had forgotten to shut any of her curtains or the door to her bedroom the night before. The apartment was flooded with light. 

It danced between the notes of the replica thought cloud that still fluttered in her living room. She would have to take that down.

But first, Roxanne needed to prepare for the morning. It was already 9:00.

She washed up, only half-heartedly trying to tame the cowlick she had given herself after going to bed with wet hair. She considered what to wear as she brushed her teeth, trying to toe some nebulous line between too much effort and not enough. While she figured he would have enough on his mind, Megamind was well aware of the impact of appearance. Roxanne didn’t want to give him anything he could over-analyze. 

She finished dressing and then poked around her fridge for any breakfast options. She knew she had just said coffee, but she had extra time and needed something to do with the nervous energy welling within her. 

There had been a box of muffin mix in the pantry, and she had just finished cleaning the last of her mess from prepping them when the doorbell rang. 

Again, Roxanne felt the strange way time had flooded by. It had been about a day since she last had Megamind outside her door. Only a day, and the world had spun a million new things into the air. Distantly, she wondered where all the pieces would land by this time tomorrow. 

She took a breath and opened the door. 

The shock of seeing him in street clothes nearly made it impossible to notice anything else. She’d only ever seen him in some sort of leather getup before, aside from the prison jumpsuit, though the style and the detailing had changed over the years. The outfit was all black, from the black jeans to the black button down shirt, sleeves rolled back to his elbows, but still. It was almost distracting enough that she didn’t notice the impossibly nervous expression he was wearing, too.

“It was Minion’s idea,” he said in a rush before any other comment. He shifted, which seemed to remind him of what he was carrying. He immediately held the bag out toward her. “This too! Because you said you’d have coffee, but it’s still early. So I should bring breakfast.” 

Roxanne blinked, taking in his outfit and his stance and his expression, hovering uncomfortably between panicked and hopeful, and found herself laughing. It was horrible timing - she could tell even as he grimaced and clutched the bag back toward himself - but she couldn’t reel it in.

Because she knew she was done. She’d known since yesterday, honestly. And looking into his face then, as he tried to prod himself through the situation he was clearly anticipating with equal measures of dread and eagerness, she was sure. Even her head, with all its counterarguments and considerations, knew it was pointless.

He’d been part of her life for so long now. She didn’t want to think about him not being part of the rest.

She smiled through her laughter and reached out for his arm. “It looks good,” she said, ignoring the way he started at her touch and the way her own brain wanted to focus on that contact. “Minion has a good eye.” 

Roxanne had to all but drag him into the apartment. It was nice to feel more certain, more confident; at least one of them would manage to push this particular meeting along. She tugged the bag from his hands. “What did you bring?” 

“Donuts,” he said mechanically, still looking at her like he didn’t know what to make of her at all.

“Ah, and I started muffins.” She glanced at the oven, considering. “Should I make some eggs? Or something? This is a lot of carbs.”

There was a little thawing; Megamind snorted. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t live exclusively on sugar,” Roxanne said, smiling again as she took the box out and opened it. “These are better with coffee, though.”

“I know.” His tone softened. “You said other food is fine, but donuts are the only thing really worth having with coffee.” 

She had said that; it was why she and Bernard always met at her favorite coffee shop, the one attached to the bakery that made the donuts in this box. She felt a little pinch in the fullness of her heart at the loss of that.

Only it wasn’t lost. Not really. It was standing with her in her apartment, looking fully unsure of what to do with himself. 

“Guess you found out a lot of my secrets,” she said with a half smile. “I hope you know I expect you to even the score.” 

“Roxanne, I--” 

The oven timer went off.

“Ah, let me grab these. You don’t have to stop,” she said. Roxanne tugged on an oven mitt and reached for the muffins, half-hoping he would continue speaking while she wasn’t looking at him. It was easier to listen when she didn’t have the full force of his expressive face, too.

But he was silent, waiting until she reluctantly took off the mitt and looked back at him. Apparently he had used the time to steel himself; he looked determined now. “I want to apologize. For tricking you,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I may have… panicked, back at the museum. I just thought it would be the once. But then you found the lair, and I needed to get you out, and then you wanted to work together, and it all sort of--!” Megamind waved his hands in the air wordlessly, but she understood. 

“Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want to work together? That would have taken care of it.” 

“Because I did want to.” He gave her that resigned smile again. “You actually wanted to spend time with me, by choice! I mean, I knew you didn’t  _ know  _ it was me, but I was still…  _ being _ me. And you were okay with it!” 

Roxanne shook her head, exasperated. Again, so smart but so stupid. “What makes you think I wasn’t okay with just you  _ as  _ you anyway?” 

Megamind looked like she had just related some basic fundamental rule of the universe incorrectly. “Because you always disapproved of my plans to destroy Metro Man and take over Metrocity,” he said, as though this were obvious. “You were never okay with villainy!”

“Yeah, with villainy,” Roxanne emphasized. “I didn’t like the plans or the villainy part, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like you.”

“But I  _ was  _ a villain!”

“Megamind,” she sighed, cocking a brow at him. “Can’t we both agree that maybe it was more nuanced than that?” 

He swallowed, still looking puzzled. “Are you actually saying that… you liked me? Before?” 

“If I didn’t like you, I would have just ignored you during the kidnappings.” She huffed a breath through her nose. “I definitely wouldn’t have flirted.”

Ah, the reaction was just as good as she had always thought it would be; it was worth her own embarrassment at admitting to it. 

He steadied himself against the counter like she had just tipped the world’s axis. “That--! That was bantering!” His ears were lilac.

“See, that’s what I told Wayne too!” she said, feeling a little vindicated. “He didn’t buy it, though. I think maybe he and those tabloids were onto something about us before either of us were.” 

Megamind was staring at her like he didn’t know which part of the conversation to follow first. “Maybe before you,” he finally said, looking away. “Not before me.”

Roxanne processed that. She had wondered what the order had been, if his time with her as Bernard had been when his feelings started or if the feelings had been there first. What he said earlier had already made it sound like the latter, but this… “Those rumors started going around years ago, though.”

“Yes, years and years ago,” he agreed. “When you were finishing college. I wanted to sabotage those offices, but Minion said that would probably just look suspicious and give them more fuel. So I didn’t.” 

After trying to knock him off balance, she supposed it was fair for him to do the same to her. “And you’re saying… even before that…?” 

“Yes,” Megamind admitted. “Which is why, when you actually wanted to work with me and spend time with me… saying no felt impossible.” He held his hands up in front of him suddenly, posture straightening. “Not that it’s an excuse! I know there’s no excuse for lying to you. It’s just an explanation. I really didn’t do it to be cruel.” 

“So how long were you going to lie about it?” Roxanne wondered. 

He folded his hands together. “I was working on it,” he said. “I thought maybe I could do enough good things that your opinion about me could change. And then maybe I could tell you. Eventually.”

“But you still would have killed Metro Man.”

Megamind grimaced even as he nodded. “Yes, that was something I couldn’t change. Even though I tried.”

“I know he’s alive… but we didn’t think he was. And you were so happy.”

“That was bad. Actually bad,” he acknowledged, looking at her briefly. That was sincere, at least. “I just couldn’t imagine it ever working. It wasn’t that I didn’t try, but failing was always the expectation. I’d never really thought about success in years, so when it happened… I was more focused on that than what success meant.”

He took a deep breath. “I am really sorry, Roxanne. For all the things I’ve done to this city, and to you. I want to do better.” Megamind paused, again gathering himself. Even with the apology on his face, he looked decided. “I’m going to do better. But that doesn’t mean you have to forgive me. I know yesterday… there was a lot going on. We could have died! It was a lot! So regardless of how things were then, I know that maybe they’re different today. I don’t expect anything from you. That you even wanted to see me at all is more than I could have asked for.” 

When he could be so flamboyant and self-centered, this quiet understanding was almost strange to reconcile as being the same person. Then again, Roxanne had seen it plenty of times when he had been Bernard. Even if seeing Megamind acting like this was new, she had experienced enough to know that the behavior wasn’t.

Roxanne nodded before turning back to the counter. The coffee had finished ages ago, and the mugs were sitting beside the pot. She poured two cups, adding a little sugar to hers and an obscene amount to his before putting in the splash of creamer. She’d learned how he took it ages ago, back when she had still been cramming in college and they’d debated the best way to get the maximum benefits from a cup.

She nodded toward the couch. “Take the corner, please.” 

Even though Megamind still looked tentative - she hadn’t given any actual reply to his apology - he did as she asked. She followed once he settled in, setting both mugs on the coffee table. 

“I want to try something,” she said.

His gaze passed over her face, clearly trying to determine how to read this situation. “Okay?”

Roxanne figured that was close enough to permission. She sat down next to him, hip to hip, and pulled his arm around her shoulders. He was motionless as she did it, so it was easy to adjust, tucking her legs up under her and maneuvering until she had a comfortable position against his side. 

She assessed. Megamind always looked so thin and angular; she had wondered what it would be like to snuggle up to him. Apparently what it felt like was right. Even when she turned her head, it was easy to tuck it into the crook of his neck. 

She hummed, smiling. Good. 

“Do you want your coffee?” she asked as she started to lean away.

The hand around her shoulder squeezed, pulling her back. “No.” His voice was tight.

Roxanne angled her head so that she could look at him. He was already watching her, those impossibly green eyes even more vibrant in the slanting rays of the late morning sun. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. So close, the intensity and warmth of it was overwhelming. 

“I’m still mad,” she cautioned, even as she felt the last edges of her anger lose their sharpness under the softness of that look. “It’s going to take a lot to make it up to me.”

“Anything,” he began, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I would do anything for you, Roxanne.” 

Her own smile threatened, and she tried to be cavalier even as her heart thundered. “Hm. I thought all this time you were trying to make me cave to your side, and yet here you are caving to mine.”

Megamind’s laugh spilled out before he could attempt to catch it, bright and pleased. He only hesitated for a moment when he lifted his other hand and touched her cheek.  _ Oh dear _ , she thought distractedly, because if just having touched his hand that once had been a problem, the warmth of his fingers against her face now was a disaster. 

But, she realized suddenly as he smiled at her, it didn’t have to be. Because he wasn’t going to be the villain. And she wasn’t going to be the damsel. They were just going to be two people moving forward together. And she could enjoy the gentle touch of his hand as much as she wanted. 

“I’m still not entirely convinced how committed you are to being good, Ms. Ritchi,” he said, all teasing. “You have done your best to be a bad influence.” 

“A  _ good  _ influence,” Roxanne corrected before turning to press a kiss to his palm. He did nothing to resist as she immediately hopped up to grab the donuts, and she was grateful for the chance to compose herself. Her giddiness felt ridiculous; it wasn’t like she hadn’t already actually kissed him once. She studiously kept her thoughts away from wondering when she could do that again.

Megamind cleared his throat. “So… I can expect to have to deal with this good influence in the future, too?” 

Even without seeing him, the hope suffusing his words was obvious. “Looks that way, I’m afraid. At least for as long as you actually want it.”

“Forever,” he blurted before jumping up himself. He stretched his hands out as though he expected her to bolt. “I mean! That sounded really serious, didn’t it? Not that I’m not serious!”

Roxanne shook her head, laughing. She set the donuts on the coffee table with their mugs before taking his hands in hers. “Let’s start with today,” she said softly, squeezing. 

Megamind relaxed instantly.

His thumb brushed against the back of her hand. For the first time, Roxanne felt a potential within the pain caused by his deception. She had held Bernard’s hand countless times by now, had felt the same soothing motion across her skin. But this was the first time she’d felt  _ Megamind _ do it. There was suddenly an exciting backlog of firsts to experience now that he was there as himself.

His smile was blinding, promising that she would have every opportunity she wanted to experience those things. “Today,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we've reached the end. I hope it's satisfactory for everybody! I couldn't leave things in a sad or uncertain place, but I also didnt want to completely gloss over all the baggage. I hope this is an okay balance. 
> 
> Thank you so so much to everybody who commented! I received so many lovely messages... each one made me so excited and happy. I'm sure everybody has heard how much those mean to writers, but it's really true that they give such an incredible mental and emotional boost. I know it takes extra effort to take the time to share your thoughts, so just know they were very much appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, nothing like deciding to finish a fic you had outlined nearly a decade ago. I just watched the movie a month or so ago and was struck again by how much I freaking love it. It's so ahead of its time! The humor is so great! Like... just what a wonderful film. So it seemed like high time to finish the fic I had wanted to do way back in the day. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the fandom is still kicking!


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